Fitness levels don't look the same since losing Mark Bitcon

We have a team of hopefuls and Championship standard players

Hankinson
Isa
Tautai
Flower
Clubb
Marshall
Sammut
Sarginson
Powell
Navarette


And let's all just face it the academy doesn't churn out players like the Farrell's, O'Loughlin, Tomkins' anymore.

Most of the academy players to come through in last few years are sub standard and will never be top class internationals

Paisley
Woods
Marshall
Partington
Byrne
Shorrocks
Mullen
Wells
Ganson
Forsyth
Field
Barnes

Plus then we have the regular crocks

O'Loughlin
Farrell
Manfredi

Plus now today Leuluai went of injured as did Shorrocks and Davies

No coach would be able to stand the amount of injuries we have and then the fundamental cock ups by players like Hamlin and Mullen rub more salt in the wounds

From top to bottom the club needs an overhaul

I don't think Lam is the right man based on what we have seen but he got a chance and has been massively hampered!!

Lenngan needs to pull his finger out and ditch Radlinski because he is neither use nor ornament and some proper investment needs making and star players from a number of years gone by need replacing.

Moan over

He's only been gone a few months so chances are the club will be doing exactly the same things as when he was here. It's not like he had magic potions and we're now desperately searching for a way to recreate his magic formula because everyone has suddenly gone from well conditioned athlete to severely unfit in a matter of weeks.

Paul Johnson as a strength and conditioning coach was working under Mark Bitcon (who was Head of Performance) for a while. Chances are he will be doing the same things as he was under Bitcon and any adverse effects of losing Bitcon will probably be longer term if the club don't keep up with advances in sports science. I would imagine that currently the club is using the same practices as before.

Lammy will not be sacked, in fact I believe the plan is to give him a three year deal middle of next week...

Now, you can look at that two ways, either Lammy is complicit in the IL masterplan of cost-cutting and is happy to see his managerial career be shattered for good or the future is a lot brighter than we all presume...I am with the latter.

So has wane, been a massive change in playing style

You've said nothing unreasonable there.

However a "consolidation year" is a poor return and not great for our dwindling number of season ticket holders.

I do believe Wane would make a difference. I sincerely mean that. He has a proven pedigree of getting the best out of what he has been given (injuries included) to great success. I do think short term he would make a difference.

That being said, you are right. Fundamentally our recruitment has been our biggest hindrance and the reason we find ourselves in this current perilous predicament. We have lost two fierce competitors in Sam Tomkins and John Bateman (who both incidentally are killing it at their present clubs). Their absence is hitting us hard.

I am curious how you have "no doubt" Lam is a good coach. What evidence have you seen to warrant this level of faith?

Good post.

I was in the camp of Wane needing to move on due to the boredom at the RL played. I will openly confess my sin of not renewing a season ticket partly due to this. However he did bring success and that cannot be overlooked. Was the Shaun Wane of playing purely down to the substandard recruitment we've made and he had to play a certain conservative style to win? Speculative and largely irrelevant now.

To pick up on your final point, I'm not so sure. I cant say I have seen a great deal of difference in our style of play. It still looks very familiar to me. What "magnificent tries" are you referring to? Either way, one thing we can all surely agree on is our defence has gone backwards. Significantly backwards and that is definitely not entertaining to see. Seeing David Fafita tearing us apart running down the wing took the proverbial biscuit.

Injuries and players who aren't Wigan standard have played their part - I agree. However - did that ever stop Shaun Wane getting results?

Yup,week by week that loss is ever more glaring

I love Wigan winning but a 4-2 arm wrestle. No thanks. I’ve not always thought like this but in the past few years I’ve become bored but I’ve kept on watching, hoping Wigan will be more entertaining.
I understand fans who want to win at all costs but it’s not for me.
We won the Grand Final a few times recently but we’ve lost about 4,000 fans, two of my friends included. They’d had enough of boring rugby.
We scored a try from a scrum at Wakefield.
When Wane was in charge, at a scrum our scrum half passed to a forward standing in the stand-off position who drove the ball in.

They’ve lost fans every year under IL even when we played good stuff under Madge, if you’d rather lose like that today than win a close arm wrestle then fair enough...we won plenty of games like that in the 80’s and 90’s too

Fitness is a massive issue, though he’s a cracking player and is doing well I think Zak Hardaker is a stone overweight.

Under Wane there was no such thing as an offload, a chip over the top and it was rugby by numbers. It was like Soviet style dull grey rugby.

To be honest I've heard from someone close to the squad how much the players like his ideas and they think he can take us to the next level. Now obviously that hasn't materialised yet, but you cant expect miracles with the injuries we have had this season. Saints have used 23 players all season, how many have we? Id guess closer to 40. How can we expect any continuity changing tons of changes each week.

That being said, I dont think a full strength this side would be top 4 so I am willing to give him time to get it right. I would definitely give him the whole of this season and next but maybe Lenagan will opt for change. Who knows.

I think it's closer to thirty but got told today that there maybe two or three more on Monday.

With out debating any of your points. I ask you one question, will you be renewing your ticket after the change of coach now boting waney has gone???

Are your friends happier now??????

To be honest, the players need some personal pride in there performance. Plenty players not doing it, not kids either%

Strange, I saw plenty of them.

Maybe someone needs to do a root cause analysis of this.

Are we unlucky with injuries, are our training methods causing injuries, or are we signing and re-signing crocks?

How would you prove what is correct? Manfredi has now had 4 x ACL's, so that would lean towards being injury prone, but what if he moves to someone else and stays injury free. Would that make it bad luck or our training?

Its impossible to know and I am glad we stuck by him. I think we will again if Im honest, hes a top player and Adrian Lam did his ACL 3 times and he turned out ok.

Presumably they didn't turn up yesterday, so they're each £25 happier than me.

Adrian Lam may not be the right person for us at this moment in time but I really feel sorry for him. His year long work experience has become a nightmare. We were always going to struggle this season because of our loss of some of the most talented players in the game. We have others who have been talking about retirement for years but are still going round. Add to that the yearly injury crisis and a fair number of journeyman squad members who are being over used. This time we cannot go out and buy in a Fielding to make things better.
Sadly our whole squad needs a shake up. We are getting bullied in the middle. Yesterday we won few collisions and looked pedestrian. I was once fond of the theory that we were running with small forwards because the number of interchanges was going down but for years now we have been lightweight. In previous years we covered that with tenacity and some creativity but we now have neither. It says a lot that Isa is probably the first name on our team sheet. Sadly we cannot even encourage some of the players to take up more lucrative offers from other clubs because the ones that need to move on will not get a better offer.
At the moment when I think about which forwards I would like to keep long term I cannot produce a very long list. We are over reliant on youngsters who are generally doing fine but who really should not be permanently punch drunk.

I don't understand the criticisms of Wane with regard to playing boring poor rugby. Yes at times it wasn't the best, but at other times it was great to watch, a spectacle in attack and defence.
His systems was very machine like, but fundamentally created a team attack and team defence as everyone know what they were supposed to be doing and when. We had some bad games no doubt, but overall under Wane it was a highly successful period which saw us in lots of finals and winning silverware. That's just facts, not even opinion.

In opposition I see people championing how Lam has brought in new attacking flair and options, personally I just don't see what he's added at all. It's not just our defence which has gone to pot, but our attack also. Apart from a left edge which is dependent on the skillset of the players not really coaching, we look very off in attack as well.

Fact is, under Lam, we're joint bottom. People can defend him, say its an injury crisis etc or whatever, but we're bottom, that's a terrible fall from grace, I don't know how anyone can champion Lam or even want him to stay on, we're simply not there under him.

It's all hypothetical, but I can't imagine us being as bad if Wane was still in charge. Why? cos it never was. Wane always found a way to win, got the best out of 'so-so' players. I can only imagine how good he'd have been if he had someone like Moran as a chairman owner.

I suppose I’m a bit more patient and a bit more philosophical about things than most. I’ve seen enough this season to believe in Lam and his style of play. What nobody is taking into account is the fact that we haven’t been able to play the same 17 two weeks on a row. At a time when we’re trying to embed new systems that’s a very clear hindrance but by no means an excuse.
Some of our players are simply not good enough, we all agree on that. I still believe the problem we have is one of recruitment over a sustained period but I’m not sure how we could have done things differently.
Tomkins coming back on marquee status was absolutely the right call. If at that time he’d been allowed to go anywhere else, the club would have been heavily criticised by our fans. Same with Budgie although not marquee.
If Williams has been allowed to go to Warrington as was rumoured, there would have been outrage from our fans so giving him marquee status was the right thing to do at that time.
We need a full overhaul of our squad and some quality additions. With Lam at the top and with players he trusts to deliver his style, I’m confident he’s the man for the job.
Let’s not forget, Saints dismantled Warrington last week and they’re far better than us. I’m not sure people on here are giving Saints enough credit if I’m honest, they were excellent yesterday.

Genuine question; what have you seen in Lam's style of play?

We’re only 11 games in and whilst we don’t always get it right, we’re trying to play much more rugby. It’s higher risk rugby that I’m seeing.
I’ve seen forwards try to offload. I’ve seen both halves playing on both sides of the pitch. I’ve seen us go from one flank to other in 3 passes. I’ve seen forwards trying to make metes after collision. I’ve seen far less predictable plays such as as winger, winger, centre, 2nd row drop off, kick which was our standard play under Wane.
As I’ve said, we don’t always get it right but we’re trying. We’ve got players out of position week in week out and with the right players brought in, players Lam trusts, we could really see a huge improvement.