We are persisting with players who are not good enough and the worst thing is we are signing more players who are not good enough . I have said on other threads i do not expect us to win things every year and certainly not at the moment , but for goodness sake we should not as a club under any circumstances be looking at finishing in the bottom 3 and from my prediction of finishing 10th i have now revised that to 11th . That prediction will change to relegation if we lose Friday . Who does anybody see us beating at the moment apart from London at home and the magic game ?
I have no problem with a rebuild and time. I don't really think Sinfield needed to come out with it, it should have been clear for all it would take time, from the mess McDermott left.
However, where I do have a problem is the way they are going about it. We are still persisting with players who will never make a difference to our long term fortunes in a million years. Why do this? Why not lose with a bit of planning at least, knowing that you are working with players with a future to make that difference?
I also can not accept the defensive effort thus far. That is inexcusable and not something to hide behind long term rebuild. Effort and desire, should be must have requirements at any time.
It’s fair to level some criticism at McD, but he got more out of his squad then Sinfield, Lowes and Furner have IMO. How much culpability remains with him for years of poor signings, rather than GH, who knows. I expect he’ll do very well with Toronto.
I agree re defence - I can handle losing much better if at least we make the opposition earn it. I do think some of the reason for this is again losing the plot in our academy for a number of years previously - honestly Stevie Ward is the most recent product still with us that can tackle. Maybe Oledzski too, he’s pretty solid given his age.
To not have produced technically complete players for the first team in all that time is a huge part of why we are where we are. Rob Burrow had more defensive tiger than most recent products put together.
There clearly has been some issue around talent identification and recruitment in the face of stiffer competition, but with all the coaches and facilities, and years of time, I just can’t believe how many lads have been coming out and grabbing at shoulders etc, getting caught out of position...
In my view, technique can be learned but defence is an attitude, and we’ve not got that right at all for whatever reasons. Maybe it’s too easy for talented lads to shine among a shrinking player pool at youth levels, maybe people get too wowed by flashy tries and fast/big lads - who often get found out at open age.
We are persisting with players who are not good enough and the worst thing is we are signing more players who are not good enough . I have said on other threads i do not expect us to win things every year and certainly not at the moment , but for goodness sake we should not as a club under any circumstances be looking at finishing in the bottom 3 and from my prediction of finishing 10th i have now revised that to 11th . That prediction will change to relegation if we lose Friday . Who does anybody see us beating at the moment apart from London at home and the magic game ?
A couple of good performances would make a huge difference to the side and make things look much rosier quickly.
However a rugby league side IMO is only as good as it’s weakest links, and we have just too many and an unbalanced, disjointed and pressurised side.
That prediction will change to relegation if we lose Friday . Who does anybody see us beating at the moment apart from London at home and the magic game ?
This IMO is ridiculous (I'm not saying it's a not a possibility). Look at Huddersfield last year at this stage and Catalans and Warrington on the flip side look at us at this time last year, and Hull - you surely get my point?
We have played terribly for 40 minutes in the last two games, and the two games before that we played really well, at the moment our defence looks shot in the middle and on our goal line but history will show you teams can pick up a string of results which will change the look of the table - Wigan look just as bad as us at the moment are they staring at relegation?
We are persisting with players who are not good enough and the worst thing is we are signing more players who are not good enough . I have said on other threads i do not expect us to win things every year and certainly not at the moment , but for goodness sake we should not as a club under any circumstances be looking at finishing in the bottom 3 and from my prediction of finishing 10th i have now revised that to 11th . That prediction will change to relegation if we lose Friday . Who does anybody see us beating at the moment apart from London at home and the magic game ?
Furner's difficulty is in screwing a good defensive effort out of the group of players that have shown signs of giving us a good attacking edge. If he can do that, in answer to your question, I can see us beating most sides. If he cannot, he will at some point revert to a selection capable of defending but that is poor in attack. I'd much prefer the former but either way I don't think we'll be in the bottom 2.
If you do not think we will be in the bottom two , who else apart from London will finish below us ?
Hudds, Wakey, Catalans. That's worse case. I'd add a few more if I knew furner could galvanise the defence of his best attacking 17. All opinion though. If I thought we were incapable of playing any better than the last 2 games I'd be thinking the same as you. But we've seen that's not the case.
The whole situation has been a marketing disaster for the club from start to finish. Build a new stadium, spend millions of £'s, we owe the banks big time, all stadium prices have been hiked up by a minimum of 10% in some areas, by more than 25% in other areas. Yet the team in the last 18 months has been awful. We can blame McDermott for so long as he was at the helm long enough, but we cant blame him for the recent signings or people leaving. Sinfield has to take some responsibility. The team has gone backward from last season. Last season the rot did not set in until after the World championship this year it set in from the first game, and having watched them play well in two of the games the other 4 games have been terrible. To say we have to be patient, and give them time, then they should have thought long and hard about this before they hiked up the prices. We have a great stadium but a poor team. Think about it, even with the golden generation how many league leaders shields did we win, McDermott said it was never how you started it was how you finished the season that mattered, and we had the best coach in the league as to how to finish off a season, the years when we won it twice from 5th, we played terrible in games so even though we won all those grand finals we never played well throughout every season, unfortunately it was never going to last. The last good season was when we won the treble, after than it was one good year either side of two terrible seasons. To cap it all and it sums it up perfectly you can only polish a turd so much. Last year we let two players go to Hull KR who were better than the players we have signed this year, JD we signed from HKR he may be able to tackle but he hasn't improved the team going forward, The two Marque signing are good quality signings but where are the follow up quality signings, we gave contract extensions to two old boys, JJB and Ablett, both Sinfield's mates, yet both haven't played to date, both are still injured as per last year, this was down to Sinfield and GH, is Loloear a half back or full back, we are now hearing he is a full back. WHY ?? when we have Jack Walker one of the quality players, the patience only lasts for so long and while we have been watching rubbish for a long time its time that someone took responsibility and ownership. I wish people on here stopped talking about being patient, how long would your employer be patient with you if you continued to underperform. Lets get this right Sinfield is not bullet proof, being a good leader on the pitch, which he was and is a Leeds Legend, it does not guarantee you success as a leader off the field. He is on steep learning curve and failure to deliver will see him lose his job, he is after all not a shareholder. So far if you judge him on what he has done to date the score would be low. We are all entitled to our views, everyone has their opinion lets respect everyone's views and lets review at the end of the next 6 games.