I am sick to death of wire fans telling us we are going down hill, but at least us, leeds and wigan breed home grown talent and dont try to buy the league, 275k for a scrum half who is only 3rd choice behind... tomkins and eastmond

You lot are going down hill.....

I'm sick to death of people posting such idiotic things on here in response which reflect badly on the majority of our fans and have led to us being labelled as arrogant.

Warrington won a trophy last year, we did not. They have every reason to be positive about their side.

Whether we are on the slide or not continually remains to be seen, every year the same comments are made by some opposition fans (i remember people saying it in 199icon_cool.gif and yet we have continued to be consistently competitive, if you don't agree with them don't just start a new thread on here about it and make a fool of yourself, post a response on their boards and back it up with facts.

Warrington bother to invest in their squad, we don't. They will be successful and we won't. I'm getting so good it's becoming almost poetic.

You do have a way with words when it comes to bumming up Warrington.

Saddened
So just buying in expensive players is your idea of 'investing' in the squad. Other people think developing youth to give longer term success is true investment.

Or were you being sarcastic and actually meant the exact opposite to what you said?

Clubs do what they think is right and can afford to do. There is no guarantee either way will succeed. We have young players in our squad. Perhaps you are just better at producing them than us. Maybe one day we wont have to buy players too.

unfortunately until the stadium is complete we will have to hold of purchasing any new players and support those who do the best they can, we have a great youth policy and great senior players, have faith.

Saints have made many big signings over the years to give them success. Their strategy may have changed slightly at the moment, but I suspect that once the stadium is in place and potentially freeing up resources then they will go with that again.

People overstate the investment that Wire have put into their squad. Wages are irellevant, as long as we stay within the salary cap, we are doing the same as everyone else, signing players for the same money. People say things about Morley and King, making out we flashed the cash, when actually we didn't pay transfer fees and simply allocated them a portion of our salary cap that perhaps other teams didn't have free (or want to spend on them).

We have spent a bit of cash on Myler (how is he 3rd at 7 behind Eastmond and Tomkins - Tomkins isn't even a 7!), Atkins and Carvell last year. The fact is that you can develop kids all you want (and our squad contains a good nucleus of young local lads) but at times you need to top up your squad with class.

I'm sure I don;t need to remind anybody of Saints signing the likes of Sculthorpe or Newlove, or Leeds signing Peacock, Harris or Senior, or Wigan signing Fielden (okay bad example!).

i agree with that, as long as they're within the cap, good luck to them. a good recruitment policy currently, shame they're youth setup isnt the same, the tompkins lads for a start are from warrington originally what a difference they could have made.

If they can afford it, then I don't see any problem. As Dave T says sometimes you have to look outside to bring players in. Warrington could have waited for Atkins and Myler to become free agents, but then would have got into a bidding war over salaries. They decide it was better for them to pay the transfer fee and get the players signed.

Time will tell if it is a wise move.

I think you will find that it was the Tomkins parents who were from Warrington and the lads were born in Milton Keynes.

They were brought up as wire fans, i've heard that from Sam himself, so if wire had a youth setup on par with your own, i imagine they'd have the england 6 and possible future england 13 in their playing squad now.

I am happy with our squad as it stands.

We have a 17 I think can take on any in the league and a squad that will compliment them over the course of a season.

Youngsters such as Wheeler, Ashurst, Dixon etc all stepped up last year and will have benefitted massively from their experiences.

With a returning Fozzard replacing the unfortunate Cayless our options up front should be boosted.

Like every other team if we lose a couple of props we could struggle.

The youth setup has improved a hell of a lot, Cullen made sure that we needed to sort this out, however it is not an overnight fix.

Looking at the squad, Riley, Penny, Cooper, Wood, Blythe, Mitchell, McCarthy have had plenty of gametime for the past few years and will continue to this year.

There has been plenty of attention on the young lads that we are signing up in the last year or two, and hopefully this will continue and they will provide a steady stream into the first team.

A system where you promote from within and sign one or two class players each year has to be the best solution.

i hope your system continues to improve, you clearly can produce talent in your catchment area,so i hope you can convert it to players