Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 7:32 am  

What's all the whispering about?

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:33 am  

apollosghost wrote:

Staggering how we've gone from four starting quality wingers to one who probably won't be available until the middle of next season if the Burgess/Manfredi transfer rumours turn out to be true.

Try telling it to those who say we do not to sign any Winger!

Burgess leaving, Marshall with a long term injury, Manfredi playing not playing anything like we have seen him play before his injuries and Tom Davies having left for Catalan.

The club needs to sign Johnstone before it is too late he is signed by another top club.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:51 am  

Ruddy Duck wrote:

Try telling it to those who say we do not to sign any Winger!

Burgess leaving, Marshall with a long term injury, Manfredi playing not playing anything like we have seen him play before his injuries and Tom Davies having left for Catalan.

The club needs to sign Johnstone before it is too late he is signed by another top club.

Why would we sell one injury prone winger just to replace him with another injury prone winger. We’d be better looking at someone like Krisnan Inu or Ben crooks

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 8:52 am  

Ruddy Duck wrote:

Try telling it to those who say we do not to sign any Winger!

Burgess leaving, Marshall with a long term injury, Manfredi playing not playing anything like we have seen him play before his injuries and Tom Davies having left for Catalan.

The club needs to sign Johnstone before it is too late he is signed by another top club.

The last thing the club needs to do is sign Johnstone.

He is a good winger without doubt although he has some fairly significant defensive flaws but your argument is flawed by your own reasoning before we even consider his wage expectations which would be significant.

Signing a highly injury prone winger....because we have 2 injury prone wingers already really makes no sense.

I’d agree we probably do need to look at an outside back signing but it isn’t a priority at the moment, however things may change depending on who goes during the offseason along with Joe Burgess.

As it stands we will have 5 lads who can all play on the wing in -

Marshall
Manfredi
Bibby
Hankinson
French

Hankinson is rumoured to be on the outer and in an ideal world you would want to keep French at 1.

I’m happy with Marshall and Manfredi as starting wingers with Bibby as cover but if that is what we are left with then maybe a project signing would be worth looking at to provide cover.

We certainly do not need a big money injury prone option like Johnstone.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:19 am  

jonh wrote:

The last thing the club needs to do is sign Johnstone.

He is a good winger without doubt although he has some fairly significant defensive flaws but your argument is flawed by your own reasoning before we even consider his wage expectations which would be significant.

Signing a highly injury prone winger....because we have 2 injury prone wingers already really makes no sense.

I’d agree we probably do need to look at an outside back signing but it isn’t a priority at the moment, however things may change depending on who goes during the offseason along with Joe Burgess.

As it stands we will have 5 lads who can all play on the wing in -

Marshall
Manfredi
Bibby
Hankinson
French

Hankinson is rumoured to be on the outer and in an ideal world you would want to keep French at 1.

I’m happy with Marshall and Manfredi as starting wingers with Bibby as cover but if that is what we are left with then maybe a project signing would be worth looking at to provide cover.

We certainly do not need a big money injury prone option like Johnstone.

I think it will largely depend on where Jai Field has been signed to play. If has signed as a half because Hastings is leaving then we probably need another 3/4 cover. I wouldn’t try to sign TJ unless either Manfredi or Marshall are leaving. Not a wise use of the cap IMO.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 9:40 am  

Ruddy Duck wrote:

Try telling it to those who say we do not to sign any Winger!

Burgess leaving, Marshall with a long term injury, Manfredi playing not playing anything like we have seen him play before his injuries and Tom Davies having left for Catalan.

The club needs to sign Johnstone before it is too late he is signed by another top club.

How do you still not understand what the salary cap is? It's been in place a long time!

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:10 pm  

jonh wrote:

The last thing the club needs to do is sign Johnstone.

He is a good winger without doubt although he has some fairly significant defensive flaws but your argument is flawed by your own reasoning before we even consider his wage expectations which would be significant.

Signing a highly injury prone winger....because we have 2 injury prone wingers already really makes no sense.

I’d agree we probably do need to look at an outside back signing but it isn’t a priority at the moment, however things may change depending on who goes during the offseason along with Joe Burgess.

As it stands we will have 5 lads who can all play on the wing in -

Marshall
Manfredi
Bibby
Hankinson
French

Hankinson is rumoured to be on the outer and in an ideal world you would want to keep French at 1.

I’m happy with Marshall and Manfredi as starting wingers with Bibby as cover but if that is what we are left with then maybe a project signing would be worth looking at to provide cover.

We certainly do not need a big money injury prone option like Johnstone.

we wont see marshall next year, manfredi is injury prone, hankinson is a slow centre so no go on the wing and french is our full back

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 12:55 pm  

Pieman wrote:

we wont see marshall next year, manfredi is injury prone, hankinson is a slow centre so no go on the wing and french is our full back

Some of that may be true, but given we are a salary capped sport abc have budgets I would think that are already stretched on players we cannot sign 4 front line wingers.

We have seen it doesn’t work before.

We have to assume Manfredi and Bibby will be out starting wingers next season (all things being equal from the current squad).

I can’t think of any team that had great strength in depth with specialist wingers.

Sometimes round pegs have to go in square holes.

Shifting Field to 1 and moving French to the wing when needed may be an option with Smith coming into the halves.

With Flower going and maybe Clubb also we need in my opinion another experienced middle before we need a specialist winger.

If we can accommodate both great wing is not a priority for me.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:10 pm  

jonh wrote:

Some of that may be true, but given we are a salary capped sport abc have budgets I would think that are already stretched on players we cannot sign 4 front line wingers.

We have seen it doesn’t work before.

We have to assume Manfredi and Bibby will be out starting wingers next season (all things being equal from the current squad).

I can’t think of any team that had great strength in depth with specialist wingers.

Sometimes round pegs have to go in square holes.

Shifting Field to 1 and moving French to the wing when needed may be an option with Smith coming into the halves.

With Flower going and maybe Clubb also we need in my opinion another experienced middle before we need a specialist winger.

If we can accommodate both great wing is not a priority for me.

I quite like and actually prefer Bibby to Marshall. Whilst he doesn't have the pace or elusiveness of Marshall, he's rock solid in defence and has that ability to start the sets well.

As you said Bibby, Manfredi and Marshall are more than adequate when it comes to a complement of wingers.

The only thing I disagree on is French moving to the wing instead of Field. This isn't aimed at you personally, but a lot of posters seem to be shifting our best players around to accommodate a relatively inexperienced guy i.e talk of Hastings to 13, or French to wing etc. I don't understand it. Depending how this season goes (if we win anything) and if Hastings and Tommy stay, then why is it expected that Filed just walks into a starting spot?

If Field doesn't nail down a HB spot, then his only other options are bench utility, or a spot on the wing imo.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Wed Nov 11, 2020 1:40 pm  

sergeant pepper wrote:

I quite like and actually prefer Bibby to Marshall. Whilst he doesn't have the pace or elusiveness of Marshall, he's rock solid in defence and has that ability to start the sets well.

As you said Bibby, Manfredi and Marshall are more than adequate when it comes to a complement of wingers.

The only thing I disagree on is French moving to the wing instead of Field. This isn't aimed at you personally, but a lot of posters seem to be shifting our best players around to accommodate a relatively inexperienced guy i.e talk of Hastings to 13, or French to wing etc. I don't understand it. Depending how this season goes (if we win anything) and if Hastings and Tommy stay, then why is it expected that Filed just walks into a starting spot?

If Field doesn't nail down a HB spot, then his only other options are bench utility, or a spot on the wing imo.

French to wing wouldn’t be ideal but as we have seen a few times this year it works when needed.

French should absolutely start at 1 but if we pick up injuries he certainly becomes an option to slot on the wing, just as he has a couple of times this year.

Field is at home in the halves or at 1. He isn’t a winger. French is a utility outside back.

I’m confident we will be going with Hastings at 6, Field at 7 as our starting halves.

That leaves Smith as back up.

For me if needed it would be better for the team to bring in Smith move Field to 1 and French to wing if we can’t fill the wing spots with 2 of Manfredi, Marshall or Bibby.