I don't agree - and I am not trying to start an argument here - but Brown has to work with what he has in the squad for this season. He took a chance on Howarth there to see if he could offer anything we have been missing over the past few weeks. He couldn't. Move on.

Until Brown is given time to ship out the players he doesn't want, and bring in players he does, then we can't really blame him for not having any halves. That blame has to rest on McManus, Simmons and Rush for the players they have brought in and signed up for too long.

I'd Potter to the blame list too ..

I believe the offer was made.

Some of your faults are the props. LMS, L'Franc, Perry and Clough are not players to win trophies which Saints fans think is where the clubs should be.
For the future you have to stick with your younger players.
Makinson was your best player at HKR. Percival is excellent for 18 yrs but will need help . Jones needs to be given a permanent place whether 2nd row or centre. Walmsley is your best prop already and I'm sure Greenwood will be very good. Walker is one for the future when fit.
You do have to get some system going where the younger players can take over from the seniors who are not doing it.
Priority surely has to sort out for good the five spine of the team positions.
1, 6,7,9,& 13. Roby is your only certainty out of those five and he's not playing at present.
Brown has to sort these out with McManus.
This season has almost gone for you so for the future things have to start moving now!

Really? hmm I honestly think he could drag us round the park, one last time.

Which way? Long to Saints? Or Saints to Long?

Long to saints.

Of course they did. Why would we need a HB?

Long has offered himself to Saints? And we said no? Please tell me I've read this wrong.

Why would we need a halfback when we have Mr St Helens Wellens, a second row who can kick a ball (sometimes) and a 3rd rate salford castoff to play in he halves.

Madness.

To be fair there is no way we can know what Long is capable of. But the romance is tempting.

Long making a comeback is a nice idea, but it's worth remembering that he wasn't so good in his last couple of seasons for us, and that was a few years ago now.

Regarding Brown, I don't think what we're seeing is his fault. As I've said elsewhere, two panic buys made to replace Eastmond and Graham, combined with whatever has gone on with Gaskell, have left us in a really tricky situation where we can all see the problem (and I'm sure McManus can too) but we can't really do anything about it until our overseas players come out of contract. It's a situation that has come about because of poor decisions made 2-3 years ago, and the depressing likelihood is that it won't/can't be addressed until next season.

Having said that, I do think that Brown should pick a half-back pairing and stick with it; whatever combination he picks in the meantime is going to be unsatisfactory, so he may as well go for continuity. At the moment it feels a bit like he's rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. I also think it's a little odd that he's using LMS as a starting prop. Clough is much better suited to that role, with Louie coming of the bench. These are side-effects of a quality that I quite like about Brown, though - he's not afraid to try something different, which is refreshing after the last couple of years.

Signing Sean Long isn't the way. As Dux says, he was a shadow of his former self in his last days at saints and had a reasonably unimpressive stint at Hull after that.

Brown has a lot of problems that aren't his fault, such as the lack of halfbacks and proper forwards and injuries, but he does some strange things to try and make up for it. I can only assume that he sees the first half of the season as irrelevant and a time to experiment.

I think we need to get a scrum half, ASAP. Someone said don't panic, that's how we ended up with Hohaia and I agree. So we should look to a loan move for the rest of the season.
Dux mentioned a top experienced Championship 7 like Finn, which is one idea, or we can try and get a NRL youngster (like when dobson originally came over), deregistering Perry if needed.

We have a decent number of players who could be part of a successfull team. Some of whom would be starts at the highest level and some of whom who are good enough to play their part. The problem with the squad is the areas we are lacking are not only some of the most important aspects, but we're not just a little short of quality in them, we've got a gaping casm.

We have Lomax, Roby and Soliola who are stars imo. We also have TP who, whilst a little lethargic, can do some sensational things against big teams.

We have potential Stars in Manu, Walmsley and Percival.

We have some good solid players in Clough, Flanaghan, Turner, Makinson

We have some very interesting youngsters in Greenwood, Jones and Walker.

We have Pope Francis, who can give much, but can also take it way.

The above should mean we can, with some work in vital areas, get back to being a top 4 club and a genuine contender. We do need to work on the rest.

The rest are shirts fillers, and some not very good ones. Given the way he was defending on Saturday, I think Lance must be trying to win and award for most dissapointing signing EVER.

That defensive performance was unreal. Leon Felton-esque.

As a fan you are normally positive when a new coach takes the reigns...but I just couldn't get excited when we announced that Brown was taking over the reigns. He did take Huddersfield to the next level although I feel he did that not with instilling an expansive style of rugby, but by making them a nightmare to play against. I felt under him they slowed the ptb down, were over the top aggressive and too restrictive despite some of the talent they had/have. I'm already noticing these traits at Saints.

When Rush & Cunningham took over, it sounds silly but I was filled with optimism. There was a sense that we were going to shake of the shackles and play a style of rugby that you associate with St.Helens. Rush even referenced the clubs philosophy to being similar to football teams like Barcelona. I believe that if we'd had a natural scrum half last season we'd have gone all the way.

Now Brown comes in and tells us to forget about the past. Forget about that brand of rugby we used to play because we no longer have the players to pull that off. Really? I've been following Saints since the 80's and we've had some ropey lineups but we always stuck to that philosophy of playing expansive,exciting rugby. Even when we couldn't compete with the great Wigan sides we were always an handful for them and we earned the tag of being entertainers.

Undoubtably, Brown's been dealt a crap hand (Like Beadle) but I'm not having it that them lads can't play rugby league without the shackles off. Him and McManus will keep telling us that and soon the players will start believing they can't either.

I'll keep supporting them no matter what, and I hope Brown proves me wrong....but him managing a team like Saints is like Pulis managing a team like Man Utd, because he too is another manager that has convinced the players and fans of a club that they can only have success if they play this restrictive, unimaginative, bland way.

Like I said though, I hope he proves me wrong.