Looks like Burgess will be going to Wigan..

Why?

If George Burgess goes to Wigan, and we can't be in for him because we've tied up our cap on other players, you have to wonder whether we are getting value for money from our elite earners. With Widdop lined up for next year I would happily swap Austin for Burgess, even if that meant we stuck with Patton alongside Widdop. The team would be stronger.

I think when we announced the signing of Widdop I was expecting him to be the cherry on the cake. That we would be close (hopefully even closer than last year) to being Super League champions in 2019, and Widdop would be the player that separated us from the pack. I expect other Wire fans thought the same.

Now I fear that next year, we will have Widdop, but we'll be further behind Saints than this year and potentially Wigan will have overtaken us, and we'll spend the season saying stuff like "doesn't matter how good your halfbacks are when your pack is going backwards".

At the current rate we must sign a prop or props to help ease the load on Hill and Cooper all we are doing or will do is burn these guys out and as Sally says be behind Saints again and if rumour has be behind a resurgent Wigan.

The club have to up the ante and with some urgency given the status quo

But , is a Widdop with a shoulder injury waiting to happen better than Austin ?

I thought that. Having said that if we can get another good prop and have centres that can pass to wingers and a game plan which means centres get the ball in space I think not all is lost. We should have decent cap available with Brown, Westwood, Adkins, Tasi, Sitaleki, Goodwyn all moving on

I disagree. Whilst Burgess is a very good player you could easily sign another player for nowhere near the marquee money Burgess will be commanding. For example, if you compare Burgess to Liam Watts say, I'd be interested to know the stats and the comparisons between the two with Watts not commanding marquee money or anywhere near it. You take Widdop and he is world class in his position, hes a game changer and a leader who is respected around the world having won everything in the NRL. I'd say he's top 10 in his position in the world. I'm not sure if George Burgess is.

Bang on LTS.
George Burgess isn't worth money...Sam is
I'm with you, I'd have Warmsley Watts and Taylor ahead of George B.

Me too RD, if only we could make it happen to sign any of those four, we could forget about George Burgess.

Having said that, George Burgess would improve our squad.

Sure, but George Burgess is available. I don't know who else is available and don't have massive confidence in our recruitment that we will sign upgrades to our pack, which will put us back in the same situation. Also my idea of getting Burgess was based on the hypothetical that Austin looks for an early release, if he doesn't, then a lot of our cap space will be invested in him. The hope then will be that when we are playing badly, Austin will step up (literally!) and pull off some gamebreaking moments. Nat Wood, who was a similar type of player to Austin, used to do that, and Austin is probably more talented than NW. At the moment the problem is that Austin is being less effective. Perhaps it's because other teams have worked out how to limit him, and there isn't enough firepower elsewhere to give them trouble.

Our season has gone a bit like Chelsea in football, where teams worked out how to contain Jorginho and then they became ineffective. By the end of the season though, both Chelsea and Jorginho seemed to have countered these defensive efforts, and they improved again, so hopefully it will be the same with Blake.

Don’t get too upset about Burgess. He hasn’t had a good game for years and he’s good for at least 4 errors and 4 penalties a game.

He's OK GB when playing but he's a liability like Sita is.
I can't see either getting an extension of contract....Lineham is also getting close. Another repeat of KR and I'd be looking at a replacement. We can't afford to carry these loose cannons.

I wouldn't want George Burgess if it meant we couldn't recruit any other players due to the high fee he is asking for.

Burgess is a decent prop on his day but is he worth adding to our squad and making the squad smaller due to no cap space.....not at all. We could sign 2 quality props for the same wage that Burgess would command possibly 3. Swapping Austin for Burgess is a rediculous statement, him and Widdop next year will be unreal. There are Quality props out there but for some reason we can't seem to find them, hull have signed a devastating second rower and 2 solid quality props for next year so they are out there. Which leads me to believe our recruiters aren't very good and Fitzpatrick isn't as good as he makes people believe. If him and Price can't get upgrade our forward pack for next year there's something seriously wrong behind the scenes.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love G Burgess if we could make it happen as it's a desperate squad need but he's not an elite player. He'll do a brilliant run on minute and the next minute he'll knock on inside his own 20. Kinda like a slightly better BMM.

But as Shazbaz referred to, it's possible that he simply isn't worth the money.

The current CEO is good at talking up the game and he has master minded the upgrade to the promotional side of the club in an effort to increase attendance. The upgrade in promotional work has coincided with a drop in form.

Austin and Widdop will be a great pairing, but only if they can play behind space making forwards we cant afford to keep pounding Hill and Cooper, failure to improve the current situation will see overtaken by other teams. Improve this and the attendances have a good chance of increasing without the winding up tactics we currently use.

I don't disagree with your thought process, who do you have anybody in mind? There's two issues in trying to resolve our pack issues, and that's availability and price. There's a good possibility that that once our club is mentioned then the price gets inflated by the players agent. Moran's cash may be great in that we can compete for bigger signings, but a hindrance on the value for money front. Our prop issue needs sorting, but it will be extremely difficult especially with Wigan also in the market for one, if not two.

I'd pay Battye the same wage as GB.
Hell of a player. Halfback in a prop shell.

That's a bang on comment, i never actually thought of that and that does make sense. Rubber Duckie has mantioned Eddie Battye and he's a hard working big minutes prop. Doesn't skittle players but do a Quality job for us and take pressure off Hill and cooper. Also if we are prepared to throw big Money at Burgess why not pick up Sebastine Ikahihifo that huddersfield are trying to move on to free up cap space? I bet he still wouldn't command the wage Burgess would but he's a Quality prop. As for other props i'm unsure. But Price & Co will have a much wider net and knowledge of who's available etc so i'm surprised we've heard nothing on the Prop front. I'm just hoping we have 1 or 2 players signed and just keeping it under wraps until the end of the season.

Do we know that Moran and Middleton directly fund the signings or are they financed through the club through income generated?

Anyhow I do not think it should be too difficult to improve upon Tasi and Sitoleki even if we had Warren Buffet on the board.

We once had the argument of not having money as to why we had a poor squad, we can't use the reverse argument now.

If we don't buy two decent props for 2020 then something is very wrong with the salary cap management and recruitment at the club.

I wouldn't have thought agents think that Warrington have more money available than others as we face the same salary cap constraint as the rest of SL and they know we already have big earners on the books.

Where I think clubs get fleeced like that is when they are clubs who have recently come in to money, not previously been spending at the full cap but now have money available. The agents know that there is cap space at these clubs and also they are more desperate to get names in to establish themselves as a club with ambition. This was us, in the Cullen era, when we were signing players from Bradford and Saints or big NRL clubs who were not quite good enough for those clubs any more but had the kind of profile we needed.

I think where we may be been overcharged is in chasing halfbacks, because agents have seen us as a club that sees itself as competing for the GF, and you have to have a front line halfback, the last two seasons we've looked in the NRL and picked up players who have commanded big salaries but not been State of Origin level so maybe found it difficult to fit into NRL clubs salary caps at the level they wanted. We've been an obvious target as someone willing to pay big for the halfback that will be the golden ticket to win us the GF.

I've no idea whether it's Moran, Middleton or self financing. Either way it doesn't matter, and as you state we cannot use lack of cash as a factor in a poor squad these days. I also agree that we ought to improve on Tasi, Sita and others, without too much difficulty.
The only problem I can foresee is other clubs chasing the same players on our radar and beating us to them, or the price being pushed up because its Warrington.

I've also mentioned Battye in another thread, which wasn't a unanimous choice amongst our community. I believe he'd do a good job for us, but have no idea of availability. Not sure about Ikahihifo, as I havent seen a lot of Huddersfield this season. Hope your final comment comes to fruition, without us being underwhelmed a la Tasi.

It's supply and demand, and all the good props (even British ones) are all in the NRL. This leaves a second, or even third tier of player compared to previous SL eras, in SL.
I cannot for the life of me envisage an agent giving a flying one about the salary cap when he or she has two or more clubs interested in a client.

If rumours are to be believed the strength of clubs in SL is up in the air massively next year. Hull are strengthening nicely on the quiet and Wigan are adding real quality to what is frankly an awful side this year.

Saints are likely to be going the other way at a rapid rate of knots meaning there could be Hull, Wire and Wigan at the top table next year without you needing to sign another player. Catalans could join them but are so inconsistent it's never worth backing them.