Carlos Alberto wrote:
It's a combination of things, for me.
1 - A badly balanced squad. Whilst NB has attempted to improve the deficiencies in the squad, we still only have one true centre, we still only have one half back and we still have 35 lightweight second rowers at the club.
I think the forwards are badly balanced, in that we have too much impact, not enough grunt. We have no one to replace Amors leader/ mongrel/ fight, or even to replace laffranchis tackling and work rate.
This is the result of a couple of more decisions by multiple coaches though, and brown (in his credit) has had one of the most successful stabs at addressing this. How recruitment goes for this season, could be make or break for saints for a good long while. I only hope we have some aces up our sleeve.
Carlos Alberto wrote:
2 - Bad player retention. Whoever thought it was good business to give Wilkin and LMS longer deals needs their heads checking. Shocking decisions, lumbering us with players we should be getting rid of, and making them hard to ship on. I would add Turner to that list too, but I think he is just low on confidence at the moment, and I think with the right coaching, he will bounce back.
Jon Wilkin last re-signed in 2011 - was an England second rower at the time, and was very successful. His retention at the time couldn't be called into question. The game has moved very quickly to make his jack of all style obsolete and were suffering for it. Lms had a fantastic end to last year, and certainly no one on here spoke out when it was announced that I recall - hindsight is a wonderful thing? There's certainly nothing to suggest he shouldn't be peaking as a forward in the next few years. I don't disagree with wellens playing on either. As said with our recruitment, brown has had a better stab at resolving these issues than a good few of his predecessors - players are being moved on both on and off contract, there's only so much that can be done in any one off season. Were potentially letting clough, Flanaghan, soliola and hohaia go for 2015 who are all under contract.
Carlos Alberto wrote:
3 - The coaching set up. From top to bottom, this appears stale and ineffective (from the outside, at least). The player's appear match fit, that much is true, but our run of injuries is a joke. I know it is a contact sport, but we are decimated season after season. The club appears to have regressed from the opening week of the season, to the point where we are now in active free fall. Those 3 matches where we knocked in the first set and conceded show a lack of preparation/motivation from the management team.
We hire twice the number of staff as Wigan, and pay 500k less on our overall wage bill (3.5m vs 4m). That's very telling for me. While were hiring bar staff and shop workers, Wigan are getting in physio specialists and psychologists. If the rumour about brown being the highest paid rumour is true (and it seems believable enough) - someone needs to tell eamonn to spend less on the head and spread it across physios and nutritionists and physiologists and build a TEAM to squeeze as much speed and skill and strength out of every single player at the club, week in, week out. Then the head coach only needs to worry about tactics and getting the players frothing.
Carlos Alberto wrote:
Last season NB was given the rub of the green as he was inheriting a poor side, and whilst we has tried to smooth over the cracks, and appeared to have a strong side on paper at the beginning of this season, it feels like we are about as far away from competing for the GF as we have ever been, and maybe it is time to start thinking about a clean start, from top to bottom. I know it won't be easy, but something has to give.
We have been spoilt in many respects. In the last 20 years our WORST finish is 5th which, whilst it felt like the end of the world last year 90% would be incredibly happy with. I feel like we've addressed the problems with our business model, we've addressed the problems with the playing squad, now we just need to address the team that gets them onto the pitch every week...
I am the hash browns of rlfans 
