Unfortunately I didn’t manage to watch the full game but from what I did see;

1/ There isn’t right going to be a selection headache when French is fit. Surely you couldn’t move Zak on this form?

2/ Can we give Faz a centres shirt yet?

3/ (broken record time) If we had more firepower in the pack we’d have put 50 past them.

Cracking result and cracking performance (from what I saw). Not sure why Clubb was picked as a starter but it’s irrelevant in reality, probably just me nit picking.

You'd think non stop defending in our own half for the first half hour of matches is eventually going to catch up with us.
Can't fault the commitment and fitness levels but I wish we could play in the oppositions half once in a while.

Definitely. No one seems to talk much about Powell, but he epitomises that with his fitness and workrate. Losing the territorial battle and relying on defence/fitness to see us through every week is a bloody hard way to make a living though. It's going to really take it out of us over a season (physically and mentally) if we are having to take 60 mins to grind teams down every week before we start to pull away. You can bet Saints will have many games won by half time this year and often be able to spend the latter stages playing at a lower intensity.

That's going to be helped a lot when we get our backs back, though.

I think there is a lot more on this side to be honest.

I’m pretty comfortable with where we are at the moment.

We have yet to click, we are winning and we are getting the basics right. The finer points need work but so far so good.

As much as there’s a clear issue with the prop position, we will see an upturn in performance getting away from our line when French, Manfredi and Gildart are back. The last two are very good at it (certainly an improvement on Hanley or the back version of Isa) and French will offer a huge threat, both making breaks and creating space for others as defences will be in two minds.

That’s not to say there isn’t an issue because there clearly is but it all has a knock on. Get backs in the back positions and Faz and Isa get in the second row and they make more ground than Smithies usually would (although he was great on that score tonight) and you put Bateman at loose and he’ll make more ground than Partington.

Gildart has had a setback which will delay his comeback by a few weeks.

We simply lack size and grunt in the forwards (and generally across the team) - add in our plodding line speed in defence and when we face a decent team we could get our backsides kicked.

It was SEVEN years ago that Radlinski said the squad was too small (in terms of physicality) and yet here we are.

Just seen Matthew Shaw on Facebook saying it happened it captains run yesterday. So it seemed like he was close to being back but the talk was it’ll be 2-3 weeks now.

On the plus side Manfredi should be available next week and French will be.

I think Bateman is a little off the pace at the moment.

He’s a wonderful player and World Class but he isn’t quite firing yet.

I’m sure he will but we but it’s not just quite happening yet.

Plodding line speed?!

You are not watching the same team I am.

Too many errors so far. I think he’s still getting to grips with being a target and it may be a lame excuse but not having a crowd in won’t suit him either. He thrives on the atmosphere of a big game.

Once the big games come round there’s no player I’d rather have in the side.

I'm not sure you can hold Radlinski to what he said when a different coach was in charge and (perhaps more importantly) we were playing to different rules. Six again, reduced interchanges and the removal of scrums may have impacted that. We do need to produce more hard yards but I can understand why we are generally preferring mobile forwards.

You've lost me on the criticism of our defence. 10 games in a row conceding 2 tries or less (and 8 in a row conceding 1 try or less), even whilst losing the territorial battle most weeks. In fact I think this is the best defensive Wigan side I've seen in the two decades I've been watching the game (watch us concede 50 next week now

)

Our defence has been a pain in the backside for the opposition in every game this season bar the first 30 minutes for Leigh. We’re flying at teams and defending aggressively and with great energy.

A battering ran through the middle would round our side off perfectly. I wouldn’t say no to Hardakers goal kicking improving either.

I didn't criticise our defence, I criticised our line speed which was shocking in the first half - hence why it took nearly 20 minutes before we actually had a set inside their 20 (off the back of another set of six). Leeds were rolling forward far too easily - it's a good job they had no halves to play off the back of it.

Yes it nice to have won our first four games but we've played the two teams people expect to finish in the bottom two (and Leigh ran all over the top of us for a large proportion of that game), a championship side in the cup and a Leeds team decimated by injuries. We probably couldn't have asked for a better set of fixtures.

The powers that be are well aware of whats required. We signed burgess last year with this in mind to fill that position but obviously it didn’t go exactly to plan. So that tells me they know the issue, resolving it though is certainly harder than us talking about it.

I personally don't mind the 1 on 1 ball steal it's when there's been multiple people in the tackle and they just drop off the tackle that's what really annoys me

How many times have we “clicked” during Lam’s tenure?

Quite often. Why?

More often that not we don’t “click”

I’d say 6 times max in 2 and bit seasons. That is pretty generous
Always an excuse from Lam for not performing 80 minutes
Too many poor and bang average forwards and a poor coach offset by great defence and fitness equals nearly men. That’s what we are

More often that not we don’t “click”

I’d say 6 times max in 2 and bit seasons. That is pretty generous
Always an excuse from Lam for not performing 80 minutes
Too many poor and bang average forwards and a poor coach offset by great defence and fitness equals nearly men. That’s what we are

You didn’t think we played well tonight?

Thought we played really well tonight and we played tough our defence was superb again..

We were excellent tonight, particularly in defence. I think some people seem to be ignoring the fact that we didn't have a single starting back playing in position and only 1 who would feature at all (albeit in a different position). Add to that at least 2 of our starting pack we're playing in the backs and talk of 'not clicking' becomes...well...a little ridiculous really.

I thought Smithies had by a mile his best game for us last night, he looked a lot more threatening wider out than when he fills in at LF.