The more I see Saints under brown, the more I'm convinced that he's very, very lucky we've had the injuries we have had this season. The reason? Because the more players we get back, the more clueless and inept we look. There is no gameplan, no set moves, no attacking structure at all. Having a few out has given him that excuse, that comfort blanket. If we had the full squad all season, he'd have been sacked by now.

When you look at Brown's Huddersfield side when they were playing well and the things they did, it's clear we're doing absolutely none of them. It was all about physicality when he was there, physically bullying the opposition, dominating territory and trying your hand with pacey outside backs. We're not bullying anyone, there is none of the aggression his Giants side had.

Some of the decisions he's making are just stupid. Wellens at fullback? It's pathetic. We may as well play with 12 men. Turner at half back, Hohaia in the centres and Percival on the wing? Just ridiculous.

I said last season that when he was announced, that we should have brought him in then. We were always going to go through a bad patch when we changed coaches, but this is getting silly now. We're in serious danger of not making the playoffs, which given the weakness of SL is just an embarrassment for the club. It's not like there are green shoots everywhere either. People bang on and on about the kids, but are any of them top class players? No, a few half decent squad players for a few years, but there are no trophies coming our way for a good few years.

Gotta say I'm losing confidence in Brown week by week. The introduction of O'Brien albeit welcome may have confused things a tad but in general we looked clueless in attack.

I like Brown, but the more I see us play the more concerned I get. I think he over complicated things tonight and I think we need to go back to basics with the ball.

Lets be honest tho, he's having to deal with other coaches mistakes and the current squad is rubbish.

The squad is one of the worst I've ever seen. Its quicker to name the players I rate than the ones I don't.

However, the defence is utter rubbish. We are all over the place.

We need a structure, if someone tells me we have one then we are hiding it well.

We have a lack of runners too which is just basic stuff. We ran ourselves into touch or into dead ends with lateral passing movements so many times, Baldy was creaming himself over Hudds defence but in reality it's not hard to defend against that.

I agree, there was no structure at all in attack tonight. Although, I would expect that given the circumstances of our halves.

I would agree with this. Though I don't think the squad is bad, there are far too many shrinking violets who are just total passengers.

We are in a transitional period. Wigan went through the same thing not so long ago but by clearing the deadwood and showing patience in a young squad they slowly but surely built a side that could compete for honours again.

Agree that the appalling recruitment of recent years is coming home to roost but Brown is making things even worse with his selection of players out of position.

I think it goes beyond Brown, the whole club structure is very fragmented. We look so unfit physically and mentally, the game plan and tactics is Browns responsibility. I,ve yet to see our team play for 80 mins this season or play with intensity that is the players responsibilty.
This team is now becoming one of the worse St Helens sides for the past 50 years.

But you'd think that being aware of our halfback situation we would at least have some set moves? We don't appear to have any.

O'Brien hasn't had time to learn the moves and implement them. I know that because I've played in the halves myself, 3 days isn't long enough.

If we see similar structure (or lack of) next week, I'll be worried then.

Agreed



No.

We need to stop making f*&%ing excuses for Brown. There were a lot of very good, very experienced individual players on that pitch tonight. A lot of internationals. A lot of NRL experience. Players who have won a lot of silverware between them. Yet there is a collective loss of form which can only be explained through poor coaching. Individuals lose form occasionally, but when a whole team does, you have to look at the coach.

Soliola, Puletua, Roby, Walmsley, Manu, Turner, Meli, Wilkin, Wellens, LMS. These are not bad players, yet none of them are even approaching form. Laffranchi's form has collapsed under Brown, while I'm excluding Perry as a lost cause whose performance can't be laid at Brown's door. Even if you subscribed to the view that Hohaia has lost all ability since he won the world cup with NZ, and Wellens is past it, then that still leaves a bunch of players who would slot pretty quickly into most sides in SL.

More to the point, even a team of journeymen can be coached to move up quickly in the defensive line, work from marker and show some f#*^ing aggression. Yet our lot play like wet tea-towels for 70 minutes of every game, looking as if they're scared of tackling and already beaten before they leave the dressing room. That's the coaching. I managed to coach my schoolgirls' team to do some attacking moves, for Christ's sake, yet tonight we had players just standing and passing to whoever was nearest, ten metres out from the opponents' line - they were clueless. That's the coaching.

There were parts of that performance which were nothing short of disgraceful. Injuries didn't leave us incapable of finding an overlap. Our injured players didn't fail to move up as a line, or drift effectively to cover moves out wide. Our medical room didn't look like it had never seena ball before whenever an attacking opportunity presented itself.

The blokes out there are highly-skilled professionals who could, and should, be doing a much better job than they are. They are collectively failing, and failing badly. The win against Leeds - which had more to do with their terrible play after hitting a big early lead than anything we did - disguised the fact that Saints have utterly collapsed. They look clueless in attack and useless in defence. Their attitude stinks, and pretty much every individual is playing well below the level at which they can play, and have played before.

Brown is responsible for that. We need to stop making f*£#ing excuses and kick the useless Aussie wage-stealer out if he can't turn this around immediately.

To be honest I feel for Brown. Saints spent big money on Perry, Hohaia, Laffranchi etc (They all played international so will have come here on a big pay packet i'd imagine)

Perry & Hohaia have been awful, Laffranchi average. When 3 of your highest earners aren't performing, your in trouble as the rest of your squad hasn't had as much spent on it, so won't be as good quality.

Then you have the half back situation. Without half-backs every team will struggle, they are the most important players in the team. Just look what Brough did to you today. You have Wilkin at the moment.

You'll still make the play-offs and probably beat us lot on Sunday as well, but I think Brown should be judged around this time next year.

I agree. And with the rest of your post.

I don't. He's brought it upon himself. We had a team out tonight that was fully capable of beating Hudds. We had forwards who actually worked hard. But Brown made wholesale changes. He does this every week, with or without injuries as an excuse, when what he needs to be doing is using a settled side. The time for experimentation has long gone. We are in trouble, the season is half over, and yet just as we are about to face the team sitting second in the league he creates chaos again by changing people around so they don't know what they are doing. Ludicrous.

I'm still unconvinced by him. He doesn't fill me with confidence at all but has had injury problems to deal with. At least he's addressed the halfback problem by bringing Walsh in for next year. Time will tell, but as time goes by, he still fails to prove himself in my eyes really.

On the outside looking in.
Brown MUST take some of the blame for the halfback situation. We are now two thirds the way through the season and according to Dastardly and Muttley he was trying his tenth halfback combination.

I know Saints have had injury problems but it is unrealistic to blame all those different combinations on injuries. Didn't he do something similar at Huddersfield with Brown, Robinson, Brough, Scott Moore etc?

How can any coach be taken seriously who fires Shaun Lunt off to Leeds, so he can bring in Scott Moore



And don't get me started on Makinson

I'll be honest, I don't think Brown has urgency about him. It seems to be a bit of a test season for him, which is fine in terms of building towards a better future Saints team, but he has to keep an eye on the now.

There was no need to drop Makinson from the wing and no need to drop Wilkin from halfback. He could have easily kept Wilkin at 7 and GOB to 6. It's what most people called before the line up was revealled.

Making such huge changes meant that we had players running into each other and over each other. We had nothing in their 20m. He really over complicated matters when we needed to steady the ship a bit. For me tonights loss is mainly laid at the feet of the coach. Does this mean I want him sacked. Does it not. We finished 9 points off a good side. But for mine they were there for the taking tonight and a better team would have made more of the territory and chances.

I've seen enough of Lance now, bench him eternally. It's clear that even the coach has no clue what to do with him, can't tackle, can't run he's less worthy of a spot than Wellens.

I thought Manu was by far our best player tonight, he really needed some help out there. Percival had a bit of a mare. But really he should not have to be playing week in week out, in his first year, so he will get the odd game like that.

A bit of continuity and set plays on the line and we would have been better for it. I'm hoping for a run of games now and I'm not going to batter the team despite my disappointment with some other lack of passion, we were so slow getting to scrums, but it was like we expected to lose. It's become a mind set now.

I think we will go ok in the future, but there needs to be a bit of something this year for the fans to hold onto.

Damn right there does. Some of us have been killing ourselves financially to keep our season ticket DDs paid each month. Fans don't deserve a year of Brown's tinkering destroying any hopes of a win, never mind silverware (which frankly died long ago). If McManus has that plan in mind then he can shove next year's season ticket where the sun don't shine.

I've said it before, looks to me like a team playing to get rid of the coach.

I would not sack the coach. Whilst I think he needs to take responsibility for the halfbacks tonight. There is no way I would sack him.

He's building his own team and so some players are going to sulk and not play for him, they know they are on the way out or at least frozen out.

There is no future in playing year after year in the way we did under Potter and Rush. Whilst it's effective in gaining a top 4 slot, it's robotic and has lead to the current, stale team.

I'd say of the changes that Brown has made I'm in favour of 90% of them. If Rush or Potter where here, I think Wellens would have another 2 years, as would Meli and Perry et al.

There just seems to be a complete lack of desire and passion on both sides. Brown seems to have a look of bemusement on his face when watching Saints and he's never animated. KC tonight looked like he was sat in detention. The players don't ever seem to step it up or show that will to win that teams of old did.

RE the positional changes.....that was the biggest let down of his reign at us - some of them were downright ridiculous - Gilmour and Faiumu as props !!! - this was the thing we warned you about and it seems he's at it again with you lot !!