What big signings. apart from French?

Bibby, a average centre/winger from Salford.
Burgess, a player past his best.
Clarke, that good for Castleford, they sent him on loan to Leigh
Hastings, yet to show anything of the form he showed for Salford and did nothing in the Great Britain team.

Since, the time of Madge, the quality of the squad with the exception of John Bateman and Academy players, has gone down both from within our own game and especially from down under.

Lam may have some faults, but you can only do a good job with what is provided, especially if you work for a employer who will not give you the right tools.

Rubbish

I told you Lam said the dreaded line..."we trained hard this week"

Same old. Same old.

I believe the issue isn't down to Lam...Shaun Wane mentioned a couple of times on local radio about not having control over signings, and wouldn't expand on it, but you could tell he wasn't happy about it. The recruitment is down to Rads and IL.

Funny, i said we needed to be playing Greenwood after last week and was shot down. Now people are saying play Greenwood.

Isa is not good enough. I dont care if he is a hard worker, a great person and has a big heart. You are either good enough or you are not and he is not good enough. He offers nothing at all ball in hand. He must be a defenders dream come true he is so one dimensional.

Dont get me started on Tony Clubb. His performances have got to a level that im not sure he could hold down a place in the championship. His stats are becoming disgusting on a regular basis. Wasnt it 2 drives last week?

Can we dispense with this myth that Tommy is better at 9 than he is at 7. Hes not. The only reason he played 9 for NZ is because they had better players in the halfs and were short in the hooker dept at the time.

J Burgess is done. Ive been saying it since last year. The guy should be shipped off ASAP. Tom Davies offered more than Burgess and we let him go. Manfredi must replace Burgess next week.

I have no idea why we signed Bibby. Every time i watched him at Salford he seemed to offer nothing. He now offers nothing but in a Wigan jersey. Why did we sign him when Hankinson can do just as good of a job covering centre? I kept quiet and gave him a chance just in case id missed something but i hadnt.

Now we get on to Hastings. He looks as ineffective as Williams did last year. I am unsure if its because of the options around him, if he was a big fish in small pond at Salford or if he does not really want to be here. Perhaps a combination of all 3? He was garbage for GB in November and he seems to of brought that same form with him to Wigan. The jury is still out on this guy for me.

If Bullock is an issue someone needs to give him a helping hand. He could be a great asset. If he cannot be on time then organise a car pool because we are becoming a laughing stock. Did anyone in management sit down and work out where we were going wrong? It has been obvious that we were lacking size but it does not look like we have brought in the right players and probably we have kept hold of some who should have been moved on. Now it looks like we are putting our hopes on a group of youngsters who are all a couple of years short of maturity. All we need now is to blame them and ship them out to bring in even more rubbish like we have in the past.

I agreed last week with you and I agree still now. He is a good line runner and makes meters with each carry. The only downside is that he doesn’t seem to have the heart.




He’s an off the bench impact player for me. Not a regular starter. Perhaps I’m soft for the aggressive hard workers like him and Partington but I’m not sure I fully agree with you.



The least said about him the better.



Equally he isn’t a good 7. He needs to be faded out and used sparingly as an interchange for Powell with Borouh taking over.



Again I don’t quite agree with you. Tom Davies was 50/50 for me on reliability but if you put J Burgess up against Marshall then Marshall every time.



His signing baffled me at the time and still does now. We’re stocked in the centres and wingers and he’s no better than what we’ve got IMO.
Willing to give him a chance though. And under a better coach he may look the part.



I think he has the same issue as Williams; no runners and the players around him have no idea what they’re doing as they’ve no direction. Hastings for me is a good player and should be partnered with French in the halves but even then it wouldn’t turn us around. We need direction and we don’t have it and that comes from the Head Coach.

Why should we be playing Greenwood when every single performance he's put in since about the middle of last season has been poor? He's was poor in pre-season, slightly better but still disappointing for the reserves against Widnes. In his last few first team games he looked lazy and ineffective. I'm in agreement about Isa not really being good enough, but his 100% effort is better than what Greenwood was serving up last season, that's why Isa is still in the side. We really could do with a genuine threat on the right edge, a bit of size, a good offload, which is something Greenwood can offer - but at some point he could do with putting the effort in. He's been outshone by Joe Shorrocks, Jack Wells, Harry Rushton, Kai Pearce-Paul and James McDonnell so far in pre-season. Just giving him a starting spot because he's big seems a bit risky.

Agree about Clubb. He needs ditching. He generally puts in the bare minimum and goes off injured. I don't see why it's worth having him in the side when we could have almost anyone else there who will work harder for longer.

Tommy can play 9 as well as he can play 7, he's got negatives and positives in both and has never looking 100% like one or the other. He can't play hooker for 80 minutes though and that's the big drawback. We'll be sticking with Powell and that's the best option. We should be trying to phase Tommy out of the team and replacing him with a half who has a good kicking game.

Burgess has everything needed to be England's best winger. He looks well short of that at the moment though. I wouldn't say he's playing badly right now, but he's a long way from his best. I was a big fan of Tom Davies. Even in his shakier moments he still offered a lot. He made great carries and was constantly involved, he was quicker than people thought and a good finisher.

I'd say Bibby and Hastings need a bit of time. They were playing in a different set up and 2 games isn't really enough to judge. Bibby is certainly nowhere near Gildart's quality though, which is what we lack. I'd also say that despite how much criticism he got, Sarginson's carries are being missed too.

We need to send jake shorrocks on his way ASAP he offered nothing last night other than passing to nobody. He had one decent game in his debut vs Widnes years ago and some how still seems to be living his Wigan career off that as he has done nothing since. Am I missing something? I don’t see anything in his game at all.

"One word Mr Chairman. Go forward."

Until this gets fixed everything else is shuffling the deckchairs.

Iyt's not though is it

I just don't get the criticism of Lenagan because without him and his money to keep us going we would be up creek

In your opinion
In mine it is

I know you have your agendas, good luck to you, but very few considered our signings and squad this year as being anything other than an improvement on last.

Lam has had as much backing if not more as Wane ever got.
He worried me first 10 games of last year as he seemed to go from blaming one lot of players one week to another week on week.

We improved 2nd half of year without ever looking like we were anything more than a team that were taking advantage of other teams poor play, poor form etc.
As soon as we came to the crunch we failed.

Hes had 12 months to get ready for this season and picked that pack last week, whether he got lu ky or not last week due to the sending off etc is debatable, but it was clear as day there were issues up front.

With Burgess missing this week (And Powell) we were crying out for some experience, size
He made the decision not to include the 3 players most people would have brought in.
I believe there was an issue with Bullock, but heres the thing, he has to manage that, deal with it or get rid.
Hita ok blaming Rads/IFl about the signings, but Lam was here and if he had no say over them then he should have had the Balls to walk, and if hes happy with them he needs to work and improve them.

Top line, are we better or not and do we look like we are getting or going to get better?

Anyone blaming Lenagan instead of Lam for that shambles need their head testing.

Certain posters have been after him for the past 6/7/8 years, theyll relate every little thing that goes wrong back to him to try and make out hes the issue.

Said it before, if anyone knows a multi millionaire who fancies throwing 20million at the club and propping up losses every year whilst being criticised for doing so please let us know whi he is as IFL may be willing to offload.

Until then were going to have to put up with the usual rubbish about IFL being tight, taking money out the club and/or just in general being a tight wad.
Whilst at the same time acknowledging that a large % of those people cant put their £20 a week into the club whilst hes put probably £10,000,000 million in.

The squad is absolutely fine, in fact it’s more than that, it’s a very good one at superleague level. A good coach could compete for every single trophy with this squad.

Nail, head

Once again I agree, you don't need to look to far to see the effect a coach who knows what hes doing with Holbrook and Saints,his impact was immediate and they never really looked back..and their squad id wager was far worse than what Lam has at his disposal at present.

The only issue I have with Lenegan is how long he will let this ride on, this isn't a 2 game problem, this is a problem that was there for all to see last season.

I would get rid of Lam as well, but who do we get if he goes? Do we promote someone like Darrell Goulding or look overseas for another inexperienced assistant in the NRL

Easter is deadline day for me. Everyone said there were no excuses for Lam coming in to this season and he’s had a pretty horrendous start in terms of improvement from last year.

A coach is there to lead the way and bring the best out of his players. He’s responsible for making them better players and ultimately for results. All he got last year was a few scrappy results but in terms of players improving or playing their best rugby, it was non existent pretty much (Sam Powell maybe).

Say we brought in the new Justin Holbrook/Michael Maguire and I made a list of players I think could offer up more than they’ve done under Lam and honestly I think it would be 20 strong.

Agree with the comments about this squad's capabilities. It pretty clear we have the ability to walk all 3 trophies this season. Not saying we should or will but we could and are well capable but just keep under performing. Joe Greenwood was superb for Wane and was a major force in our GF success and now all of a sudden he is garbage etc. That back line is ridiculous when fit

1. French
2. Manfredi
3. Hardaker
4. Gildart
5. Marshall
6. Hastings
7. Smith/Tommy

That is a very skillful back line and half. We should be tearing sides apart but............................ You can't do that if your props aren't cutting the mustard. The problem lies up top. We need big metres and big carries and some senior players to step up. The raging Bullock is prime for this but if the rumours are true then he needs to sort his lax and billy big balls attitude out. Not a fan of Flower but he can come back in for me too and not seen Clark yet so cant comment.

IL took the easy and probably cheap option on Lam. He’s on a rolling contract and you aren’t going to get a top coach coming on those sort of terms. You’d also struggle to get one if the coach has as little say in signings and back room staff as we are led to believe in my opinion.

So,if Lam does get the boot sooner rather than later, it would not surprise me at all to see the job given to Lockers.

The club have known about the forwards not cutting the mustard for a few years but still continue to reward under performing players with contract extensions, starting positions and low minutes on the field.

If we had a pack that could make 50-60 metres a set we'd be laughing with that backline.

Agreed. There is no balance to our squad at all. All of the talent is in the backs, barring Lockers and Farrell. Hastings doesn’t turn into an average half overnight, he just had the platform to play at Salford that we can’t/won’t give him (and French).