Yes you are.

You look, but you do not see.

When you’re at school, and in exams teachers always want and require to see the working out of math equations, so they can verify that logic is correct and that the method is a repeatable process that can be used to reliably solve other equations.

Leeds can solve the odd difficult equation, sometimes. But there’s no working out, no method, it’s not a reliable repeatable process.

The likes of Saints and Wigan have reliable, effective, repeatable methods that solve equations.

Leeds don’t.

MathS and bodybuilding??

Im absolutely sure they will jim, they're too good not to have a few come through, my concerns about development arnt that all these lads are going to end up in league 1 or NCL, i just dont look at becoming a leeds first team player as the ceiling or confirmation of being developed well... But, as not to derail the thread.. on pure talent you wont find anyone as excited or confident in the young players we have in the club as me.

On Fusitua and Bentley, agreed, a year too late with Fusitua, but seems guaranteed he'l be gone for next year, but didnt Bentley sign a new 2 year, not sure, but he could be at the club a while yet.

I’ve just finished a book about players from the great 80’s team at Liverpool. There are themes running right through the book pretty similar to what you quote above. There was an embedded process that transcended managers and coaching staff. A style of play was adhered to by everybody, and without fail every player knew their role and specific job. It gave players confidence, and was ultimately a huge help to some of the less naturally gifted one’s. The majority of contributors are intentionally less well known, the likes of David Johnson, Michael Robinson and Nigel Spackman. They all without fail say how hard they trained for success, harder than anywhere else they played. Compare and contrast to what appears to have happened at Headingley in recent times, and it may give you an indication where the bigger problems lay. Some other factors the contributors quote are a great team spirit but also a will to win unlike any other club, maybe another couple of things we’ve lacked in recent times. You could actually say our club and players embody the polar opposite to all the key traits above. I can’t stand scousers, so didn’t read this book through rose tinted spectacles. I just found the book an interesting insight into prolonged success at the top level.

That's all well and good, but the final exam for this team is not 10 or so games into the season. If you want to use the school children analogy, shouldn't we give the teacher more time to help his players learn, give them a bit of leeway for improvement, instead of writing them off as wasted effort? So far they are doing okay in their coursework - let's see how the next few assignments go before being too judgmental, eh?

If you are a teacher in real life I wouldn't want to send my children to your school

In any case, to get that kind of positive consistency we would need a new DoR basically. Without that, each coach coming in will change systems and philosophies. GH in charge has done many things, but it hasn't provided any systematic success for a very long time - this is the truth.

It's not a hopeless position but - the kind of systemic club approaches you're talking about take years to embed fully.

We probably should get started then.

Short term simply trying to defend with more intensity would make things better.

I’ve been saying it for years GH is past it and we need to spend far more on our whole coaching set up

remind me how graham murray and tony smith, even to a degree powell, did in there first seasons.

takes time rubbish. a good coach can install the basics in a pre season. the rest takes time yes but a top coach makes all the difference.

Yup. You know straight away after a coach’s first pre-season whether they are any good.

Smith started out better than almost any coach I can think of in 2022? Its been last year onwards that issues have arisen.

“After first pre-season”.

Also, why is that initial sample size when Smiths influence was small (recruitment training time) more relevant than the 18 months since?

Smiths intitial bounce was probably more to do with being anybody but the incompetent coach he replaced, another god awful appointment that had British RL laughing at us at the time

We all fell for it, no shame in that, was a great feeling thinking we finally had our coach....Then his first pre-season started, and the worrying signs were there for all but the blinkerd