Re: Squad for Salford : Sat Mar 18, 2023 11:13 am
bellycouldtackle wrote:
Our squad is the lowest quality squad ever assembled in SL . Only four SL quality players in the squad , Jowitt , Murphy, Lino and Tanganoa . Jowitt and Murphy are out rest of season, Tanganoa missed pre season , injured on return suggesting he was not ready and missing for long period . Lino is not the messiah and not able to win games on his own . The squad would struggle to make top 4 in Championship , this Sunday's team would finish bottom four in Championship. The building of our squad for the 2023 season is criminal . Everyone knew that of all seasons don’t get relegated this year , Leigh , Salford , Hull KR , Cas all got the memo.
Depends what you are classing as SL quality. If you mean who would be starters at other clubs then i agree, although i’d add Whitbread to the list as well. Lyne has the ability but is the ultimate case of a player that stayed somewhere to long and went stale and whether at 30 he could hit the heights again i’m not sure. But i think should we drop then a few of our squad would get signed up as squad players. We have players like Kershaw, Ashurst, Hall, maybe even Kay & Hood who are all competent enough back up at SL level and some promising youngsters who clubs would be interested in to pad their squads out with. But as a whole we are a bit behind the others.
But as you got bang on, this time round there is no weak team to save us. I still feel our best hope is Leigh but they have started well and will likely keep improving. They also have cap space and the money to improve their squad whilst we don’t. We have had worse teams than this and managed to avoid the bottom spot/drop. 2011 & 2015 spring to mind. Then though we had an experienced coaches who’d been there and done it all before in John Kear & Brian Smith. This time we’ve gone all in in Applegarth who has had no senior coaching experience bar one season as the junior assistant last year and asked him to to get a tune out of the worst squad in the league. I feel for him as he was always up against it although i’ll counter that slightly by saying for me he didn’t spend the money he had wisely enough. We lost some key players last year and they were not adequately replaced.
There is a long way to go and it’s not over yet but even in the dark years i’ve thought we’d dodge the bullets. This time i’m really not convinced we can.