Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Mon Mar 23, 2015 9:32 pm  

NickyKiss wrote:

If you look at a couple of names linked with superleague next year like Kenny-Dowall and Shillington they're the types of players we should have filling the gaps that our homegrown players can't. We currently have a 'well past his best' overseas fullback and a couple of 'projects' in Gelling and Tautai.

Ian Lenagan needs to dust of his wallet or the hard work that's been put in during his time at the club could quickly go down the drain.

Unless Lenagan is falling for the Wane obsession that he can put an all Wigan produced team on the field.
Remember Lenagan had no problem opening the purse strings to bring 3 top Aussies in in Hoffman, Finch and Lima over for Madge.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 7:48 am  

Fames wrote:

Fully agree - time to splash the cash and spend the maximum salary cap. One or two quality signings are certainly required! Get on the plane to Australia and do a Maurice Lindsay........

Look how that turned out.....

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 8:10 am  

stillinthepast wrote:

Unless Lenagan is falling for the Wane obsession that he can put an all Wigan produced team on the field.
Remember Lenagan had no problem opening the purse strings to bring 3 top Aussies in in Hoffman, Finch and Lima over for Madge.

I feel that Lenagans goal as much if not more then Wane because he knows how cost effective that would be.

Around the time of us bringing in those three you mention an all Wigan produced team wasn't quite as possible as it is now. The issue with that supposed goal now is to make it a reality you would always have needed our best homegrown talent in the side so Sam Tomkins and Harrrison Hansen(who I count as a Wiganer in truth) leaving should have put that notion to bed.

We might have enough players to put out a homegrown/British 17 but it isn't good enough to challenge for trophies yet and as more players leave (like Burgess) it never will be.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 10:51 am  

Grimmy wrote:

Look how that turned out.....

TBH, I wish IL would show some of Maurice Lindsay's "flair" when it came to signings, both British and Aussie/NZ players.

Any one player of the calibre of Bell, Miles, Inga - or Hanley, Gregory or Lydon. A different era and ML was undoubtedly rather extravagant with the purse stings but these were Wigan's most successful years and it was great to watch these stars every week - as well as win all the trophies!

It would never happen again because of the salary cap, but I do feel that recruitment has been poor and the quality of signings has been disappointing this past year. Bowen's money could have been spent on a far better player and I hope Patrick starts to deliver more. And surely, we should be spending up to the salary cap limit, which apparently isn't the case with Wigan. Unlike Saints, Warrington and Leeds.

What is even more annoying is that Greg Burke is playing well at Hull KR and he would have added some much needed size to the back row. And Jack Hughes seems to have been acquitting himself well at Huddersfield - certainly contributing a lot more than Patrick for Wigan.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 11:48 am  

Grimmy wrote:

Look how that turned out.....

Ok then we should just sit back only sign cheap player and promote youngest who are cheap and we will walk the competition

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:09 pm  

Grimmy wrote:

Look how that turned out.....

I know why would we want to follow that and become the biggest club in the world again?

The only issue i have with what ML did was he didn't know when to stop. There were times he signed big name players for the sake of it when we already had in place players who could do more than a decent job.

If he could have found that happy medium then we could have carried on for many more years imo.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:25 pm  

Cbr1000rr wrote:

Ok then we should just sit back only sign cheap player and promote youngest who are cheap and we will walk the competition

It's worked so far though hasn't it. When Lindsay was chairman it was a lot easier to bring over good NRL talent due to the strength of the £ and the fact the NRL salary cap was similar to ours.

We signed Dallas, Richards, Renouf, Ainscough, Vaealiki, Carmont, Phelps, Bailey, O’Neill, Barrett, Lam, M.Johns, Moran, T.Smith, Dobson, Davico, Seuseu, Paleaaseina, Logan, Smith, Furner and Fletcher from the NRL. I’d say more than half of those players were average/poor, and we won 1 trophy in 10 years because of it. Now the NRL cap far exceeds ours, there’s realistically no way we would be able to sign a Dallas, Richards, Renouf, Barrett or Lam from the NRL now. If more than half of our NRL signings were poor when we relatively had a lot more money to spend, what would it be like if we took the same approach now?

We have hit a bit of bad form, largely through giving away penalties in defence and rustiness in attack. We are still going in the right direction, which has seen us win two grand finals and two challenge cups since 2010, not to mention always finishing in the top 4. The sky isn’t falling in, we don’t need to change our whole approach.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 12:51 pm  

Grimmy wrote:

It's worked so far though hasn't it. When Lindsay was chairman it was a lot easier to bring over good NRL talent due to the strength of the £ and the fact the NRL salary cap was similar to ours.

We signed Dallas, Richards, Renouf, Ainscough, Vaealiki, Carmont, Phelps, Bailey, O’Neill, Barrett, Lam, M.Johns, Moran, T.Smith, Dobson, Davico, Seuseu, Paleaaseina, Logan, Smith, Furner and Fletcher from the NRL. I’d say more than half of those players were average/poor, and we won 1 trophy in 10 years because of it. Now the NRL cap far exceeds ours, there’s realistically no way we would be able to sign a Dallas, Richards, Renouf, Barrett or Lam from the NRL now. If more than half of our NRL signings were poor when we relatively had a lot more money to spend, what would it be like if we took the same approach now?

We have hit a bit of bad form, largely through giving away penalties in defence and rustiness in attack. We are still going in the right direction, which has seen us win two grand finals and two challenge cups since 2010, not to mention always finishing in the top 4. The sky isn’t falling in, we don’t need to change our whole approach.

Just saying that because we didn't sign decent players then there's no point in doing it is laughable.

Other 'lesser' teams have been very successful in their approach to signing overseas players. I previously made the example of Hull KR who consistently seem to find players who aren't considered world beaters but turn out to be very astute signings i.e. Blake Green, Paea, Kelly, Galea, Vea etc. It seems that whilst we are chasing the big names, on big contracts who then have to turn out to be world beaters (ROI ) other sides are being a lot smarter in a salary cap world.

The players are out there in the NRL i'd just question our scouting network and possibly willingness to go and look.

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:39 pm  

sergeant pepper wrote:

Just saying that because we didn't sign decent players then there's no point in doing it is laughable.

Other 'lesser' teams have been very successful in their approach to signing overseas players. I previously made the example of Hull KR who consistently seem to find players who aren't considered world beaters but turn out to be very astute signings i.e. Blake Green, Paea, Kelly, Galea, Vea etc. It seems that whilst we are chasing the big names, on big contracts who then have to turn out to be world beaters (ROI ) other sides are being a lot smarter in a salary cap world.

The players are out there in the NRL i'd just question our scouting network and possibly willingness to go and look.

Look where it's got Hull KR! Would you not call Gelling, Sarginson, Flower, Taylor and Clubb astute 'under the radar' signings? I don't see what odds it makes that only one of them came from the NRL, we're evidently good at making shrewd buys like you advocate and willing to pay for bigger names when they become a available, albeit with varied success (Bowen, Lima, Finch, Hoffman, Pettybourne)

Re: Rumours and signings v9 : Tue Mar 24, 2015 1:52 pm  

Grimmy wrote:

Look where it's got Hull KR! Would you not call Gelling, Sarginson, Flower, Taylor and Clubb astute 'under the radar' signings? I don't see what odds it makes that only one of them came from the NRL, we're evidently good at making shrewd buys like you advocate and willing to pay for bigger names when they become a available, albeit with varied success (Bowen, Lima, Finch, Hoffman, Pettybourne)

Where did it get Hull? Green & Paea moved onto larger clubs whilst Vella and Galea more than proved their monies worth. Albert Kelly is up in the air but i think he's a very good player hence him being linked to replace DCE at Manly next year. From that last i'd say they have excellent connections in the NRL that if put in place at Wigan could mix well with our junior development side.

Out of the players that you have listed above i'd argue only Flower and possibly Sarginson have made an ROI. Clubb is is going well at the moment but i don't think he had a great year last year. Also three of them are young guns when it could be argued we need 26/27 year olds.

That's besides the point as what i'm trying to say is whilst we are going for guys like Tautai, Green, Vea after they have come over here why aren't we just targeting them at source?