Firstly I think Mr Lenagan is an outstanding owner and chairman.

He has without doubt saved this club from the embarrassment of relegation and clearly has the best interests of this great club at heart despite the losses incurred.

The main concern for me is the comment about winning at all costs, our style of play and the squad.

I 100% want to win, I think however the style of rugby we play is contrary to to that notion. Expecting to win trophies by playing rank bad negative rugby even in a diminished competition is totally unrealistic. I also agree with him about the squad. We have in my opinion the best squad in the league, however if we do not utilise it and play to our potential then what is the point in having a good squad.

Seems to me Mr Lenagan is attempting to deflect some of the performances away from a rightfully under pressure coach whilst not too subtly piling the pressure back on him by stating things will change next year.

Over to you Mr Wane.

Good luck.

1 to 13 name the best player in SL and see how many Wigan players you come up with. I come up with 1 SOL or maybe 2 Bateman. The rest are pretty much average joes. If we had the best squad as a minimum we would have qualified for the play offs and beaten a pretty average Hull team at Wembley

I could only add Gildart to your names if I'm being honest.

Didn't realise the side that wins SL has to also be the dream team.

My mistake.


Glad Cad and Leeds this year have the best player in every position.

When we won it last year did we have the best players 1-13?

Last year we were shoite and except for a totally inept lWire we should never have been near even contemplating a GF win.
If we have the best squad why aren't they then in the dream team or in the national squad? Surely the best squad implies we have the best international players and players respected throughout the game?

SOL is the only class player we have.

The rest are average or below average if you judge by international standard.

Most are dumb as well, coached by a dumb coach.

Dumb team get the results a dumb team deserves.

Ignorant.

Style over squad.

Madge over Noble.

I will have a pint of whatever you have had.
So the best squad in SL has won 1 trophy in 4 years.
How does that work?
It is a total utter nonsense that we have the best squad in the competition.
The same tripe has been rolled out for the past few years.
We are not particularly successful and play a style that is alien to the majority of supporters.

Clueless. However you are entitled to your opinion.

Had a few beers last night and wasn't at my most eloquent. I apologise.

You have kind of made my point for me.

I personally don't think the squad is the problem. I'm fairly happy with the squad.

Yes we could do with some improvements in key areas mainly with a controlling half but if we dont bring anyone in I wouldn't be panicking.

The issue is with the negative dull style that we play, the playing staff will never reach their potential under such instruction.

Wane is staying that is clear, his and the coaching staffs challenge is to play a style that gets the best out of the players something he has failed to do so far.

For me we need a couple of x factor players to spark our attack. Wigan have been built on defence over the past few years and injuries apart when we have our strongest team on the park we can defend as good as any team. So the attack I think is simple to solve.

Escare to 1

Williams at 6 playing as a 2nd receiver no a left or right half but across the park

Sam at 7 leading the attack.

Micky Mac as starting 9 with Tommy coming as impact 9 from the bench. Powell battling it out with them both as competition for places

Lockers at 13.

That spine would be easily good enough to win SL and re ignite the Wigan Fans enthusiasm. Why do I feel there is only me can see it.

That's all great, but it's the players off the ball that need to make the effort, they need to be working, giving options and creating doubt. Without this you get 1 man rugby with the ball just going through the hands. That is our biggest issue in my eyes, it's the entire way we set up, or don't as this season has progressed. Craft has been thrown out of the window and we've tried to play a posession and territory based game, thing is that failed as our forwards are as soft as sponge and our kicking game is dire at times. We seem to realise this each game and they end up forcing the pass trying to look for things that aren't there.

No problem john.
It would be a boring world if we all thought the same.
We are both passionate about the club but just have different views on the way forward.
Is SW stays I have have no problems as long as we change our style and add a few players.

To be the best we must be ruthless and honest. Micky and Tommy must both be on far more than Sam Powell. Get rid. Use their freed up funds to bring in a real 9. Sam to back up.

Needs to be a genuine look at our squad and coaching staff this offseason.

Currently things aren’t good enough.

Looking back to the Hull game that we just held on for, with about twenty minutes to go, their forwards were rampaging forward and we looked spent. When you see our props making a handful of carries on a game it is a wonder that we look so unfit. I know that TT used to make mistakes trying to offload but I preferred that to our lack of ambition. Whatever happened to "always expect the ball"?
A lot of posts say get rid of player x. We are talking about contracted players who have rights that we would not wish to have taken from us. That being the case we need to use those players well. Next season we will have at least four bookers on the roll, if we include Tommy in that. It gives us the opportunity to take players out of the firing line and rest then properly. Ganson deserves more game time and hopefully Shorrocks will stay fit enough to have a run in the halves.

I would never suggest that players should just be made redundant. But in some cases, selling them might be an option.

That said, in most cases I doubt there'd be many takers.

I must be honest - the fact that in 2018 we'll find ourselves with four hookers, two of them has-beens, one of them bang-average and the other untried, makes me wonder if we should simply anticipate more of the same underachievement. Four hookers taking up cap space, and a barely a halfback or a prop worthy of the name!

I would like Wigan to sign Kruise Leeming, he has a good running AND passing game, also does his fair share of the defensive work.

Impressed me from the first time I saw him.


Five hookers, thoughbut...

Get another couple of 12 stone wet through middles and recruitment for 2018 will be sorted.

It's the Wigan way

I like IFL as an owner and chairman and fully appreciate that he didn't have the easiest job giving a speech after the end to our season.

I fully believe that his comments re winning at all costs were an attempt to take the blame away from SW.

The speech didn't fill me with confidence that changes are to be made. It seemed to be more a case of we will look to improve under the current structure. I will await further developments before the season ticket renewal deadline and if changes aren't made I won't be renewing. I can't face another season of the boring rugby that we have had to suffer for the last 2 years.

The parts of the speech about the commercial side and the move to Robin Park were pretty positive. He seems to have a clear vision about the financial side of it but there are issues like the falling season ticket sales.

Whether taking games to far flung places which IL sees as gaining sponsorship is linked in any way to these falling season ticket sales is hard to say. I think he needs to be careful because whenever we have to move games be it because the pitch needs re-laying (again), because Latics have a game on or because he is chasing sponsorship I don't think it helps. It's confounded by things out of his control like Sky switching games but it all adds up to a general dissatisfaction and makes people question the financial wisdom of buying a season ticket. Add in lacklustre team performances and a competition structure that some thinks means only a few games matter and perhaps this is not surprising but taking away even a single home game doesn't help when you have these other factors in play.

I thought what he had to say over the performance of the team was very poor. At least he acknowledged what most fans have been saying which is that things have been getting worse for the last three seasons however the excuses do not add up. As he said himself we had a purple patch for four years under Madge then Wane's first two years. What he didn't mention was that success was off the back of some great entertaining RL. So when he said he wants to know if there is more to it than win at all costs he is missing the point because these objectives are not mutually exclusive. We won by playing a far more entertaining brand of RL [ibecause it was far more skillful[/i. As someone else said we had players running off the ball and were not playing the one man rugby we see today to give just one example.

In contrast since (we are told) we adopted the win at all costs strategy things have [iactually got worse[/i. He said himself three years of decline and we have won half the number of trophies in the last four years than in the first four. This season in particular has been dire and instead of setting positive records we set some like the worst number of defeats in the league for 30 years. So the excuse this is down to Wane being told to win at all costs doesn't wash. There has been enough evidence over the last three seasons it has been failing for something to have been done about it by now.

He then commented that despite this we have been in several grand finals and lost a CC final so relatively this isn't really that bad. That comment could have been lifted off the Ancient & Loyal facebook page happy clappers club. Yes, compared to the likes of Leigh we do not have their problems so to some it might seem churlish to complain but that is the whole point. With the resources we have we expect success and skillful play. Not dire wrestling based one man RL that doesn't actually deliver the "win at all costs" objective - the actual wins!

So when he says this relative "success" doesn't mean sackings I think he is being far too accepting of the situation. He mentioned himself the fact Madge took virtually the same team to success which is something I constantly mention to justify us getting a new coach now. He seems to have forgotten to get the same group of players to perform he had to get rid of Noble. If he wants season ticket sales not to slide further things need to change which isn't to a move to a style of RL that looks flashy but doesn't deliver success but to get back to playing skillful RL that does. I am not convinced Wane is the man to achieve this nor do I have his apparent faith in the coaching staff to get the same group of players to perform.

You and I disagree to an extent about Shaun Wane but I thought your post was fair and well balanced.

Where I do agree with you is about season ticket sales and the effect of taking games away from Wigan for a variety of reasons. You don't for example, find Leeds trying these things out. It seems to me that Hetherington has his eyes firmly on the playing side of things and doesn't get involved so much in marketing projects.

I agree, think he is a really talented and exciting hooker, would need first to let some players go in that position however or similar to Cas re position then.