Earliest return for Cust is 6 weeks.

Like I said, we play to the edge of the rules. Won't hear Peet bitching and moaning about it like Wello though.

I love Derby week

Weather looking perfect for Friday and looking like around 22.5k sold so far, reckon it's going to be a butterflies in the stomach kind of day

I
He’s ill, not trained since the Leigh game.

It’s looking like a great occasion, it’s such a shame both teams are missing big players who can change a game.

It doesn’t take away from the occasion but would be great to see both teams go at it at full strength in front of a full house in the Spring sunshine on Good Friday.

Best week of the year.

Lets hope its a bumper weekend at the Fanzone, and the DW food remains stale and unsold until Easter Monday.

Kind of agree
But I believe Latics don't directly get the benefit of the concourse sales anymore.
They sold the rights to Sodexo, not 100% sure how it works but they got something like £1million as a lump sum and Sodexo now get the profits (not sure if the 1million was for 1 or say 10 years though, presume it's for a multi year deal).
Sodexo also paid for the upgrade and rebranding etc you can see and they employ the workers.
They did stop short of changing all the seats to Blue though
Of course the more people use it, the more Latics will get when the renewal of the deal comes up if it is making more money.
So your point still stands in a roundabout way.

I’m usually an optimist and I’m the past I’ve been referred to on here as a happy clapper!
We played well against Leigh but that seems to be clouding the judgement of a few on here. We’ve been awful in the weeks before that and it took Field going to the halves to make any difference to our attack. Without him, we’ll struggle to create anything again and if (God forbid) we end up with Powell there I can see us not scoring a single point.
Saints is the only club I’d pick Isa to play against as a first choice second row, simply because he gets under their skin but we’ve lost that too.
I fear a long day on Friday and genuinely I’m dreading it.
We’re a better side than in recent years but still way behind Saints even when they’re not firing on all cylinders. We’ve still got too many average players to even contemplate dominating the competition again and to dominate the competition we need to beat the top sides consistently. Our current squad isn’t good enough to do that.

Always expect the worst then anything other than that is a bonus

I agree - clear for all to see how reliant we are on Field and French. I'd be surprised if we get anything out of the next two games and longer term I suspect we'll end up 4th or 5th.

I think we will win

Isa is often a total liability against Saints - you may see that as "getting under our skin", I just see it as an average player struggling to keep up and becoming frustrated.

I genuinely wish he was playing.

Shame about the big name absences on both sides, but I suspect Field missing is bigger for Wigan than Walmsley for us.

There was a visible uplift in intensity against Leigh, both in attack and defence and that played as big a part in the manner of the win, as moving Field to 6 did IMO. It’s a blow to lose Field, absolutely no doubt about it and we won’t be facing the lethargic Saints team of the past few weeks but I wouldn’t write us off yet. What I would agree with, is we shouldn’t go Powell in the halves. You have another fit halfback in the squad, so use him.

Bookies have it dead level on the handicap. I expected we’d be slight underdogs with Field missing.

i think if Lam was still coach i'd agree with you as he became a liability, and just seemed to lose the plot. i think that was a combination of his competiveness, and lack of it from a team perspective, and he thus he just seemed be very frustrated and lose it. From a team perspective this year, he shored up our right side of defence which looked a little flaky with French, King and KPP on that side early doors. He's one of those players who is never going to set the world on fire, but is an excellent squad player as he has / can cover a couple of positions, he's always available (from an injury perspective) and thus, despite not being 1st choice, seems to get a lot of regular starts.

agree re Field and Walmsley, in an ideal world both teams are at full strength, but we may miss Field more than you miss Walmsley. Ryan Brierley was on commentary last week when we played Leigh and said he was a nightmare to play defensively and Salford were happier when he passed as that wasnt his strongest asset, but gave them nightmares when he ran at them

I’m usually very enthused about playing young players and my normal instinct would be to say play Astley.
With Isa and the rumours on Twitter that Farrell is also out I’d be tempted to play Powell in halves as the team, particularly the majority of the forwards, are relatively inexperienced.
Peet seems happy to play an inexperienced rookie with other rookies to rest the regular players but I just don’t think that he will go with Astley on GF. Whichever way Peet goes I’m sure that he will make the right decision.
Hopefully Peet may go with Forber on the bench if he does start with Powellmat HB.

Really looking forward to this one.

Pardon the pun but I didn’t expect them to sit on the fence for this one.
Like yourself I was expecting we would be +2 on the handicap.
I’m pretty sure that this will change before kickoff

There was indeed a definite uplift in intensity which was great to see. My concerns are not around attitude or effort, just a sheer lack of creativity which for me stems from forwards being dominated for large parts of most games. I also look at how slow our distribution is from 9 when Powell is there. It’s horrendous at times and defending teams are on top of our forwards before they receive the ball. There is a marked difference when Cust and O’Neill are are at acting half.

Saints are +2 on B365 (are they were this morning anyway).

HKR are also +2 against Hull FC, which seems crazy to me on current form.

Saints squad annoucement will be ineteresting tomorrow as despite Wellens sounding bullish I'm not sure how fit Paasi is and this week may be too soon. He still had a noticeable limp when he walked on the pitch after Friday's game. With Norman being injured we are very light on props now and him out with Walmsley would be a big issue.

Friday is a genuine 50/50 call for me as we haven't been great since the WCC and pace will beat us which is what Wigan have with French and Marshall. Field will obviously be a big miss.

My hope is that Friday will be a turning point for us and just the type of game we need to get us out of our slumber. We have a fully fit 1-7 and Mautautia is back who is superb on that left edge and a real 80 min player.

Club just announced 23,000 tickets sold for Friday, ticket site shows less than 70 in West Stand and 500-600 left in East Stand (blocks ES1 and ES10 only released yesterday).

With three full days left to sell before Friday is looking likely for a complete sell out. Weather also looking fine all week so it should be a cracker!!

I remember being there when the record of 25,004 was set (well, i remember most of it)

Never quite understood that as I'm sure South Stand has always been reserved. Think that one was Uncle Mo massaging the numbers to break the stadium record at the time.