Oledski, Handley and Smith

Of the returnees

Hardaker went ok, Bentley got stuck in (legally)

Myler looked way off the pace, Fusitua a mixed bsg

A really disappointing performance after the HKR game, although Salford played well. King had another good game against us for Salford, we struggled to contain the Salford pack and halfbacks.
Agree with the above regarding Dwyer, even by his standards his distribution was poor today. He missed a few tackles too. Salford seemed to Single Broadbent out from the kick off and he had a torrid 1st half but did seem to improve a bit later on.
Salford targeted Myler when we attacked and that stifled our attack. Not sure about the criticism of Donaldson, I thought he was as good as any of our forwards. I'm not sure but don't recall Salford scoring while he was on the pitch.

Cheers. How did Walters go, I thought it was interesting he was picked.

Jealous! Had some great holidays in Sharm…..

Wasn’t given that many minutes but looked ok, seemed a handfull, although i think he did try a daft offload close to their line wasting another opportunity

Good, let’s hope he already has some names in the “going” list in his little black book…

Interesting that he spoke a lot about how players react with other players and conduct themselves on the pitch.

He also seemed to look a bit bemused at the crap line of questions from the journalists, seemed a lot like his dad and uncle in that respect

The lack of effective communication (a leadership trait) has stood out to me for a few years now. We concede points and no one speaks. Compare that to 2004-2015 or so and look at the leaders in that group. It’s like we have either forgotten what a leader looks like, or simply decided they weren’t important to us.

I’m more impressed with Smith’s post match presser than pretty much any match performance this year. He has very quickly identified what is wrong, and I’m sure he can fix it, but needs to be able to do whatever is necessary with the full backing of the board.

He does come across really well.

As for all the stuff about body language, I do wonder if he’s already identified some players that aren’t up for it mentally or who don’t fit the ‘team ethic’ he is so keen to build.

I see Salford Social Media team are on the ‘Bantz’ wagon. Screams classless to me but each to their own, not sure a club with next to no fans who are having to move into a non league football stadium have that much to gloat about

They should let their performance on the pitch, which was excellent, be the talking point not us.

Their forward pack that dominated ours included 1 ex leeds project signing gone wrong, 1 leeds academy and 1 leeds uninspiring overseas project. Alarming.

I agree with this and maybe the players he has identified will be dropped next week to make his point.
Our successful years have come from players who played as a team and pushed each other to get better.
For all his faults JJB seemed to have built that trait back into the squad for it all to come falling down again.
I get the impression Smith won`t pussy foot about thankfully.

We're basically a soft team. Too nice. First up contact in defence is awful. No line speed in defence so give cheap metres away every time. On the rare occasion we can create a half chance a total lack of composure results in another chance bombed. Every error seems to be followed by a fist bump with the nearest player. Try a rollicking instead.
Recruitment has been a problem but when was the last time we recruited someone who played for us at the same level of performance that they achieved at their previous club? We can't recruit, neither can we get the best out of the existing squad.

Hi, I read the forum alot but hardly ever post but this was a bit harsh on JJB, what were all his faults? Thought he did a good job in very trying circumstances

Dare it be said that JJB achieved this without some of the ‘bigger names’ playing and perhaps that isn’t a coincidence.

Not aiming at anyone in particular but most of the big names have been pretty bad with the exception of Martin who I think has been really good this year.