With an 11MGBP turnover, Leeds will never spend much below the SC...

the idea that the funding of the southstand will affect recruitment is a nonsense imo. Regardless of anything else in the scheme of a £10million pound investment our entire playing budget represents less than 2%, any cut in the playing budget would be a maximum of about £200k (we arent going to go into a season spending less than £1.4m on the cap), which represents 0.2% of that investment, a drop in the ocean. I find it hard to believe GH is sacrificing the possibility of on the field success to find 0.2% of the money to finance the southstand especially considering that at least part of that saving will be lost in lower attendances, lack of prize money, lower merchandise sales etc.

On the coaching side of things, its difficult. McDermott probably deserved his chance, injuries and poor form have probably exacerbated his short-comings and Im loathed to write him off after 10 games, but I struggle to think of a coach who has ever turned around a situation like this. We also have to bear in mind the disruption the upheaval of changing coach mid season and the damage that in itself would do.

Plus we have to ask who we can get, its all very well clamouring for Murray, but would he be prepared to travel half way around the world for half a season? Would he want longer? If he did would he be the right appointment for the next 3 years? What about Noble? His pedigree is unquestioned. We all know he can get a first team playing well. Would he be so bad if he was only given control of the first team with someone else taking responsibility for everything else? Would he be happy with the end of the season? would he want 2 or 3 years?

Also, we need to bear in mind in Australia there is a bit of a merry-go-round going on at the moment in coaching, maybe it is better for us to bide our time and get the right man, see who will be available at the end of the year in a month or two and get the right man for next year, rather than acting now and getting who is available rather than who is right.

Not just INTO Europe but dominated the European Cup for two years !

maybe the decision has already been made,after all a new coach would want an say in recruiting for the following season,either McD is staying, or the new coach is already in place and making decions behind the scenes

Absolutely.

Absolutely right - people who say that seem to be just trying to find some logic or blame at the top in the sometimes seemingly random cycles of sporting success.

Personally, I think sacking McDermott now is not something which should be considered and we'll see where we are at the end of the season. We have (or most of us have) got into the habit of overlooking early season form with the expectation of us suddenly "turning up" in the playoffs. Indeed, the repeated woefulness of Bluey's teams for huge chunks of seasons (and indeed Smith's in much of 2006 and 2007) seems to be being forgotten. Not to say that is right or wrong and I wouldn't suggest we are on the right track now but I think the same standard should apply to Brian Mac: no matter how awful it seems today, it's August to October that matters.

However, all that said, if it were to be the case that we were looking for replacements then we need to decide what position we are in and where we want to go. If we were to consider bringing someone in mid-season for 6 months then IMO we may as well just let BM finish off what he has started. So we may be looking for a permanent replacement. With the greatest respect to Graham Murray, who I admire massively, he did very little in terms of bringing young players in or on - he was very effective instead at getting more than (much more than) the sum of the parts he had available to him in the form of a group of mostly quite old players, a team which by necessity had to be dismantled shortly after he left.

That is sort of the position we are in now, but are we looking to transition to a new team, or try and hold course with the core we have for a while longer? Tricky. Noble I would say is similar to Murray in some respects but also more inherently objectionable.

It is my belief that McDermott wont turn it around but he probably does deserve a bit more time. If we dont win at least 3 out of the next 5 and 7 out of the next 10. Then things will probably come to a head.

I would say both Noble and Murray would get more out of this side than McDermott is. But is succession planning part of their skillset?

I wouldnt be averse to seeing either come in on a short-term basis until the end of the season.

Next season (if McDermott doesnt turn it around) maybe Matty Elliott would be the place to look.

For the love of God NO!

Who else is there? John Lang is 60, probably not the age to uproot half way around the world. Elliot will likely be replaced by Nathan Brown at the end of the year so he will be available. Wouldnt want Daniel Anderson and I doubt he would come back. Powell has had his shot.

There doesnt seem to be a whole heap of peope available, Wigan are likely to stick with Wane, Salford barely have a coach at the moment.

The overly-influential Sinfield may get his wish earlier than expected.

On the positive side, that ought to see a welcome end to his overly-ineffective international career.

Duncan - Leeds will never be in danger of breaching the cap - I would suspect 1.4/5m is the max GH will ever spend.

To run a premiership RU side is expensive - even with the quality of players Leeds have - that is not possible out of the pure RU revenue streams the money has to come from somewhere.

Lang would be my choice, with a younger British assistant coach who could be groomed to take over in 2 to 3 years.

Neither of the current two are that younger British assistant by the way. Maybe someone like Harris if he would be willing?

What is the TV income for a Prem RU team by comparison to the squad spend?

Lang has had the best squad Souths have had in years and he has taken them backwards - we need another Maguire - a quality assistant from the NRL who is able to shows the ageing core players who is the boss.

I didn't make myself very clear did I. What I meant was that Leeds will never spend up to the cap, but they will never spend way way beneath it either. GH is frugal, but not daft enough to think that by spending say 250k below the cap he would have a squad strong enough to be real contenders.

If I were a betting man, I'd say that every year we are between 30 and 70k under the cap limit.