I think people are being a bit harsh on Merrin. Yes the club gave him a window to do a deal, but the lateness of this is down to st George sorting themselves out taking time.

There are still a lot of players moving around here - including genuine stars like Holmes and Mitchell. That creates chaos as clubs make space on their cap and tends to lead to multiple movements.

We've been caught in the crossfire a bit with a player who clearly wanted to go home.

So as this is a rumour thread, who should we replace him with? Personally I’d be looking at a British player, but I’ve no idea who, because I can’t think of a single one who is worth Marquee money.

Luke Thompson might be in a year or two, but there’s no chance of Saints letting him come to us. We don’t need any back rowers so that’s Bateman and Whitehead out of the equation. I don’t see a back that would be worth signing, and we already have more halves than enough. We’ve just signed Leeming so no point going for Clarke.

It has to be an overseas player.

Don't get me wrong, I think I am being a bit harsh on Merrin, I'm probably more frustrated with the situation rather than him personally although I am a bit disappointed with how he's handled it but who knows it could have been the club who told him to make the statements he did.

Honestly I don't think we should rush into replacing him, especially with an overseas player - I'm talking about using the Marquee spot here.

Hopefully we can get ourselves into a position where we can make longer term appointments in coaching and playing staff once we’re free of relegation threat.

It’s very hard to wrestle back the initiative in sport once you’ve lost it.

The level of change is crazy. It’s not impossible, maybe Ward aside, that the Leeds starting pack for 2020 will be completely different from the one which started 2019. Same for the half backs.

And there are still a few more changes to make before we’re truly competitive again. Pretty major sweeping of the broom by KS.

Needed to happen though and I’d say we are through the worst of it now. Some tweaking left but the major surgery is done.

It’s anybody’s guess how the team will travel next year. You’d like to say better than last year, but other teams have been trying to improve too. I still can’t see us winning anything until our younger lads are further on in their development.

Once again we have been taken for mugs! I cannot believe we have just released him, how soft do we need to be! Personally I am fuming about this because we won’t replace him properly, I respect family but he signed a contract so ST George should have to pay a fee. We have paid two fees now for Gale and Leeming and we just let our Captain go for nowt. We are a joke sometimes. As for no assistant aswell, words fail me. If they don’t pull something out of the bag we will be in a relegation battle again.

If we sign Prior and another prop the pack looks far better than any time last year, particularly if Crosby comes back.

Looking at the squad we look weakest in cover 1-5, especially with Tom Briscoe out for a while.

To be fair we don't know anything about the deal, we may have got a fee (although I doubt it)

Do we know roughly when Briscoe is back?

Yep agreed. Stephens and Broadbent, maybe A and L Sutcliffes, Mellor can play centre I believe too - but we are shy on quality wingers.

Think there was an article in the YEP a few weeks ago which said Tom Briscoe was due back in March or so. Would miss around 2 months, but then would need to get match fit.