There is a reason why you are just a random on an internet message board, instead of a head coach.

Come on then Wayne bennett, tell me how you would produce some creative players out of nothing. Tell us all how easy it is when there are none available

Without McManus this club would have disappeared 3 or 4 times over in the last decade. The fact that we are now financially stable (maybe even profit-making) with a brand-new stadium of our own, right in the middle of the worst recession in anyone's living memory, are still competing right at the very top of the league every year, have a squad to match anyone else's and have as good a chance in the trophy shakeup next season as any of our rivals is utterly remarkable frankly. You need to have most of your screws completely missing never mind loose to even begin to criticise the way he's running this great club of ours.

Now that is at least a reasoned arguement. Which beats the usual. I agree there are times when we have recruited badly, however I would not say all are bad. My problem is people use hindsight far too much to critise, where actually had they been in the position at the time without the ability of forethought, they would most likely have made the same choice.

So I'll give you Lance - I doubt many would agree that he was the right man for the job advertised. (Although as a FB, but anyway)

Perry - I can't say that this was bad recruitment, quite frankly if we had not picked him up when we did, you yourself would have been saying there go Saints passing over a SOO player, look at who we are missing out on. I would also say Shenton would fall into this catergory. A good signing at the time they where signed. Whether it works out after that is not down to recruitment.

Meli, Wellens and Gardner are retention - I'll agree on Meli and Gardner, although I can see the arguement people have with Meli. With Wellens I'm more flexible. I do think others should be given games to see how they go, but I would not have got rid of Wellens the way you would suggest. If those who came in could take the shirt off him, then fine, but you don't bin a quality FB, on the hope that someone better might be around. The irony now is that we have a quality FB, but playing half.

The big question for me is Centre, Willi Talau we seamed to go through years of just filling in for him, in that senario we did get rid of a quality player in the hope that someone else would just turn up, they did not.

My point is you have to be fair about these things, I would expect a drop off in recruitment whilst funding the stadium and I did not expect us to be paying out fees for players whilst the club is incuring huge losses in the region of Millions.

The problem is that a few fans on here won,t accept that and have been spoiled by the extended period of success over the first 10 years of superleague.
McManus already had the vision that the quality of player was going to diminish or become less available and made a move to develop within the club.
It was only 3 seasons ago that we had a promishing development of a new no 1, 6 and 7 to take us into the new decade, unfortunately we have Lomax playing out of postion, Wheeler injury ravaged, Eastmond influenced out of the game. These would have been a pretty good platform for future success, instead we have progressed into yet another season of transition.
Our biggest setback was 2011, low fan attendance, low income streams with increasing expenditure on the new stadium. As already mentioned this is not a good indicator to go out and spend beyond your means on players.