A good thread this. It cuts to the heart of the matter - we're way off traditional Saints standards in attack, and also significantly off in defence.
For those who like playing with numbers, the average points we scored in a match over the first 20 seasons was 31/32. So we're averaging two unconverted tries or one converted try and a penalty) less than our 20-year standard. That's pretty bad.
In defence, we conceded an average of essentially 19 points per game over the last 20 years. So this year we're letting in one converted try more, on average, in every game.
I don't want to get too Phil Clarke about this, because averages hide a lot of variation, but we're in a bad way, and it's not just fans being fickle. Our attack and defence are both the worst they've been for twenty years. That's not because every other club in SL has got better at the same time.
For me, the obvious problem is in our backs. Every team in SL has now clocked that because our backs tend to be small, slow men, if they can spread the ball wide, then they've a very good chance of breaking our line and going the distance. Similarly, when we have the ball, opponents know that they can seriously compress their defensive line, because even if we did pass the ball out, which we rarely do, our backs are easily caught and tackled.
I don't think our forwards are bad. I think their options are limited because of the aforementioned compressed defence other teams put out against us. But when was the last time we had a Saints team where there wasn't a single threequarter who was even vaguely likely to be selected for an international squad from -any- country?