who's fault is it really?

[DaveO]

TomThumb posted:
Maybe i am MR optomistic, but here are some facts, we have lost 3 games this year, one against a high in confidence wakefield side

Who shipped 72 points at London. They are not a great side at all and we still could not beat them.

by 2 points another against a bradford team who for 70 minutes we ran them all over the park, all we needed was a level head out there and we would have won that game in convincing fashion.

But we didn't and what is more that Bradford side were hopeless for 3/4 of the game. That game more than any other exposed the squad for what it is which is inexperienced and too lightweight to compete. We could not out away a poor side at home with a big lead. It is not the first time we have done that in recent seasons either. Leeds and Hull ring any bells?

London on saturday night was a really bad performance, but we dont seem to like playing at griffin park as last year we lost there!

Oh that is OK then!

so in effect we have played really badly in one game, and the rest we played quite well in!!

Amazing. Yet again we just about rule out a top two finish by a terrible start to the season and we played quite well in two of the three games we lost so its OK! We didn't play well in the two we won either in case you didn't notice.

dennis moran and danny orr were starting to do something and work well together and with danny injured and the game after we play badly, these partnerships take time to work! Danny gets through an immense amount of takling and i felt we missed him in the middle on saturday as our defense was awful.

Its all to easy to call for peoples heads in this situation, but there is no rush, were only five games into a very long season.

You forget that it is, if you want to win SL, that you must aim to finish in the top two. By starting as we have we have just about killed that ambition yet again.

The season may be long but it is a long sprint not a marathon. By that I mean you must, if you want a high league position, hit the ground running not be playing catch up from round 6.

For the third season running we have had a poor start with injuries and performance and I for one and absolutely sick of us making the same mistakes year after year.

Stability creats success, not rash decisions in the face of a few drawbacks! just look at bradford they nearly lost there opening three matches and look at them go!!

But they didn't lose their opening three games did they!

A few weeks in rugby is a long time!! Lets just calm down and if were still in this situation in a couple of months time! then it might be the time for heads to roll! but not so early on!!

It is not just Betts head people are after....

What annoys me the most is thatdenis has done so much for the club both past and present and people are so quick to get rid of him! Just give the lad a chance before you burn him at the stake! The lad loves the club just as much as anyone on here!! the least he deserves is a chance!! So get of his back and lets get behing this great team of ours!!

What he has done in the past is all well and good but if he can't deliver as a caich what good is that?

Dave

[Special K]

Righ on H's wife i would say See you See you to that over the hill liability. And blaming Betts for Lindsays mistakes takes the biscuit.

[mrs_carney]

we_need_a_coach posted:
:conf: What do you mean, concentrate on the players who are here ? The whole point is that our current players ar'nt good enough, we are to light in the pack, and are tactically hopeless, Betts, Mo both know they have to go to help arrest the slide, then the new management team will need 2 years to put together a group of players who can achieve something, it's going to be a very, very long summer, Lets just hope DW still has the time and the will to organise us at board level, when the football get promoted (God forbid) and continues to back us, otherwise we could very quickly become another Castleford !

SHould of guessed we'd have a positive reply off you! Our players are good enough they just need to be fitter, they arent the biggest bunch we've ever had but they are good enough for wigan because the ones who arent go

[MrsLam]

mrs_carney posted:
SHould of guessed we'd have a positive reply off you! Our players are good enough they just need to be fitter, they arent the biggest bunch we've ever had but they are good enough for wigan because the ones who arent go

I don't think that is a rule at Wigan. It's not a case of "If you're not good enough you go" We've let good and bad go.

Ohh, you're all bringing me down I'm trying to see some positives and this time last year, and the year before n the year before that I was saying we're building for the future, eventually we'll be good again but it's just not happening. It's not that I don't think we'll finish in the top 6, cause I still do believe we'll come back and play well mid season and get some shock results but what I'm saying is, those results shouldn't be that shocking. We should be going into matches by now with a 50 50 chance of winning it, I don't mean from our point of view I mean as a general opinion like for example when Saints play Bradford, generally people would be believing it could go either way. If we played saints or bradford right now we'd be seen as having no chance. We were promised so much and it should be here by now.

[GeoffN]

I've been taking my time to join into this debate, mainly because I was so upset with our performance on Saturday.
Lots of different opinions, of course, but while I'm still unconvinced that Betts has what it takes, I think it's unfair to be talking about sacking him until he's had a fair chance.
The squad we should have had at the start was decimated by injury - I'm confident that if we'd been able to play them all we'd have won every game so far. I think Betts is putting a brave face oh things by not blaming the injuries, and quite rightly talking up the youngsters by saying they're good enough. The fact remains, no team in SL could lose players of the quality of Davico, Farrell, Carney, Hock, Orr, Sculthorpe, without suffering. Also, it wasn't Denis' fault that O'Connor, Smith, Robinson and Cassidy were allowed to leave.
Coaches can only do so much...again it wasn't Denis' fault that they were dropping balls and missing tackles all day, and although I'm not blaming Ganson for the loss, even Stevo was pointing out the refereeing errors that led to 3 of their tries.
As already pointed out, London aren't that bad a team - they massacred a Wakefield team that had previously beaten both Bradford and ourselves.
I'm not convinced that any other coach could have coped any better with all the problems we've had.
And let's not forget, no-one really expected Mike's illness to drag on so long - the trip to the USA was supposed to sort him out.

[mrs_carney]

:eusa2:

[TomThumb]

Dave, I was full of anger and dispare at the result on saturday, I have supported wigan all my life and love the club but to make kneejerk reactions to what has not been a good start to the season is slightly imature and shortsighted, I have read your responses to my earlier post, and fully understand your frustrations but with 5 or so coaches in the last 5 years and only the challenge cup to show for it. Obviously replacing coaches after a few bad results does nothing except create unrest in the team.

Wigan have no god given right to win tropheys, there is a lot of expectation at the club and understandably its frustrating when a team loses and is on a bad run but supporters are supposed to support not create unrest, as posting kneejerk reactions after a bad performance and so early in the season are both pointless and damaging.

[Fraggle]

TomThumb posted:
with 5 or so coaches in the last 5 years and only the challenge cup to show for it. Obviously replacing coaches after a few bad results does nothing except create unrest in the team.

I've had the same thought. After we won the GF back in '98 we've had Monie, Goodway, Endacott, Raper, Gregory and Betts as coach. 6 coachs in 6 years, 1 trophy, and no appreciable difference in our success under any of these coaches. Changing coaches so often doesn't seem to work, so maybe the club should be looking at some of the people who have been constants in those 6 years. There aren't many players who've been there all this time, especially once Faz has gone, but one person that jumps to mind is the Chairman. I'd agree with people saying Betts probably isn't up to the job at this moment in time (and with no training or experience he can't really be blamed too much for not doing the biz), but if he goes then I think Chairman Mo has also got to go. Given the speed that he fires coaches it's obvious they're not up to the job in his eyes, and he's the one who decides which players come and go, but who's responsible for the playing and coaching staff in the last 6 years since he rejoined the club (excluding Monie who was already in the job)? Yep, Maurice. If they're rubbish, as his massive staff turnover suggests, it's his own fault. He's got to start taking responsibility for picking people who are not good enough, but no, he'll sack another coach, get someone else in but once again give them no say in which players to bring in etc. Nothing changes. There's no guarantee things would be different if ML went, or if he changed his style of running the place, but we seem very much stuck in a cycle of endless transition, and somethings got to change.

[DaveO]

TomThumb posted:
Dave, I was full of anger and dispare at the result on saturday, I have supported wigan all my life and love the club but to make kneejerk reactions to what has not been a good start to the season is slightly imature and shortsighted, I have read your responses to my earlier post, and fully understand your frustrations but with 5 or so coaches in the last 5 years and only the challenge cup to show for it. Obviously replacing coaches after a few bad results does nothing except create unrest in the team.

Wigan have no god given right to win tropheys, there is a lot of expectation at the club and understandably its frustrating when a team loses and is on a bad run but supporters are supposed to support not create unrest, as posting kneejerk reactions after a bad performance and so early in the season are both pointless and damaging.

Who thinks we have a God given right to win trophies? I am not posting a knee jerk reaction but reacting to THREE YEARS of the same thing happening at the start of the season. This idea that we always start slow I have seen mentioned isn't good enough because the competition demands different.

As to Betts he has been dealt a poor hand by ML there is no doubt about that but given he has virtually no coaching experience would you have appointed him as coach in the current situation this week had he not already been involved at the club?

That is the problem we have in the coaching department IMO i.e. he isn't experienced enough to coach an inexperienced team.

It was an easy job last season with Farrell, O'Connor, Lam, C Smith and Cassidy to help out. It is much harder now. I don't think he is up to the job.

Lets hope he proves me wrong.

Dave

[DaveO]

GeoffN posted:
I've been taking my time to join into this debate, mainly because I was so upset with our performance on Saturday.
Lots of different opinions, of course, but while I'm still unconvinced that Betts has what it takes, I think it's unfair to be talking about sacking him until he's had a fair chance.
The squad we should have had at the start was decimated by injury - I'm confident that if we'd been able to play them all we'd have won every game so far. I think Betts is putting a brave face oh things by not blaming the injuries, and quite rightly talking up the youngsters by saying they're good enough.

?? He has been slagging them off in the press calling them petulant hasn't he?

The fact remains, no team in SL could lose players of the quality of Davico, Farrell, Carney, Hock, Orr, Sculthorpe, without suffering. Also, it wasn't Denis' fault that O'Connor, Smith, Robinson and Cassidy were allowed to leave.

That is true but he has to cope with what we have got and the question is, can he?

We replaced Davico with Guisett, Farrell has gone and so we have a squad of 26 players. Out of that squad we had three injuries at London. Orr, Hock and Carney.

Given Hock is out for the season he was only two players shy of what he has to work with for the rest of the season.

That is not a happy thought and will need some top coaching skills to get them to do much.

What is so frustrating regardless of Betts ability as a coach is we are already close to having to write off another season when we ought to be seeing the fruits of the rebuilding that supposedly went on over the last two or three years.

If I see the word "transition" linked with the side again I will explode!

Coaches can only do so much...again it wasn't Denis' fault that they were dropping balls and missing tackles all day, and although I'm not blaming Ganson for the loss, even Stevo was pointing out the refereeing errors that led to 3 of their tries.
As already pointed out, London aren't that bad a team - they massacred a Wakefield team that had previously beaten both Bradford and ourselves.
I'm not convinced that any other coach could have coped any better with all the problems we've had.
And let's not forget, no-one really expected Mike's illness to drag on so long - the trip to the USA was supposed to sort him out.

The main problem is no doubt the squad assembled ( I use the term loosely) by Mo. As I said it is going to take some coaching to get it to do anything.

Dave