I think it needed to be said. Nobody likes being called soft by their coach on tv. We'll get a reaction one way or the other - the players will take it on board or the coach will prove unable to motivate them. Either way will lead to change.

Agree. For all his faults he's not a stupid guy.

He has been saying similar for weeks now. I think it began with 'I warned the players ...' at some point around the time of the Hudds CC game but nothing has changed.

He has on occassion said that 'we're not where we'd like to be' or some other coachism like that, but he's not made comments anywhere near as barbed as in his interview on Sunday. He basically implied that Huddersfield will be looking forward to playing against us because our forwards are all fannies. To me that's a new level of criticism, and if it doesn't get a new level of response then it's difficult to see where Brown can go from there. Massive game on Friday.

Eamon's first decision this morning will be whether to have a full fat latte or a skinny cappuccino when he meets Nathan for a "coffee".

You are second in the league - third if Wigan win their game in hand. There is every chance you will finish top 4. Because you are out of the cup there is every chance you will be fresh come September.

A lot can happen between now and then. Leeds are running their older players into the ground for instance. Peacock and Leuleui are unlikely to last much longer playing at that intensity.

Saints have some good youngsters. This is purely a coaching thing. He needs to drop a few big name players (I would drop Wilkin) stick with a few young and hungry lads and go for it. The older players are losing him his job at the moment. Youngsters can play with no fear and if they are good enough then give them their head. Experience is overrated - especially if it is recent experience of losing big games whilst the good experience is years ago.

I could see a younger pack with the addition of Amor backed up by Walsh and the young backs going close this year.

Irrelevant. Look at our big game results this season.

Huddersfield in the cup - Extremely lucky to get a result. On another day Brough's DG is given. We were well gone until Ferres was sent off.
Warrington away - Decent result but in a poor season for Warrington, this was arguably their worst performance
Leeds hone - Great effort with kids willing to give their all for the jersey.
Wigan home - Outenthused by a team who on paper weren't favourites to win the game. Not for the first time against Wigan and certainly not the last.
Castleford away - Didn't turn up for 50 minutes. Great effort to come back but Castleford contributed to the win by freezing as the winning line drew close.
Leeds away - Forwards didn't turn up, comfortably beaten
Warrington - As above.

Other than Warrington away early doors, we couldn't argue if we'd lost all 6 of the other games. I don't particularly blame the backs although Turner has been poor. Our senior forwards need to take a good hard look at themselves. They've been disgraceful.

The worrying aspect for me is Amor has missed the majority of those games. He played in the 1st Warrington game, went off injured against Huddersfield and missed the rest. When he doesn't play our forwards go into hiding.

We need more players like him in the pack who are wiling to take us forward and do the hard work.

It's embarrassing to be reliant on one prop forward.

Of the backs, only really Turner hasn't shown up. Lomax, Jones, Swift, Makinson (and to a lesser extent Percival) have all shown up for us.

Having said that, Lomax needs some serious defence coaching. I don't doubt his commitment or bottle, but he doesn't throw himself under balls on the tryline in the way, say, Hardaker does at Leeds. His defence is likely to stop him developing inot a genuine top player unless some serious hard work is done.

Look at it another way. By common consent Leeds are the best team in the comp. Only two teams have beaten them. Both similar scenarios. Lots of youngsters in due to a host of injuries.

At the moment Wigan are stronger due to Good Friday - but that can change in June at the DW derby.

I for one am not writing Saints off. I think that Wigan/Leeds/Saints with possibly Huddersfield have a decent chance at winning the GF.

Yes things need to be changed - but you are starting from a position of strength. You have the players - it's the attitudes that need work. Nothing else.

For me Lomax has gone backwards with respect to Defence, he doesn,t show that realibilty and confidence in taking an akward ball be it a high or bouncing ball.
His biggest problem is reading the game play making sure he is in the right position, I,m suprised Brown has not tried a few games withLomax in partnership and learning off Walsh with Lance back to his natural position of full back.

I see where you are coming from but this attitude has been in place since Sculthorpe finished playing. We've lost Graham over that time and Wellens isn't palying the full 80 any more but there's not one leader out there for us. Roby and Wellens have always lead by example rather than by their words which is fine in itself but it's always nice to have a player bawling the lads out behind the sticks if things aren't going well. You'd always get that with Sculthorpe/Graham/Long/Kieron. When was the last time our lads had a scrap on the field? Again, I'm not saying it's the right things to do and it was nice to at least see some of our lads run in yesterday when it looked as though there may be a bit of trouble but the last time it kicked off, the majority of our lads turned their backs let Walmesley get on with it. Can you imagine Leeds or Wigan lads doing that?

It's not all about trophies but we've gone into 4 Grand Finals in that time as favourites and won none. We've not reached a Cup Final since 08 losing plenty of big quarter/semi finals to Wigan along the way. Whenever the pressure is turned up to it's fullest you can almost guarantee we're fully behind the 8 ball at 12/16-0 down after 20 minutes. Other teams want things a hell of a lot more than we do and it's high time that changed. That defeat yesterday could turn out to be the best thing that's happened to Saints for years if we start to learn the lesson.

For me, Lomax is the player currently playing furthest beneath his capabilities. Yesterday, we actually made several breaks. The job of the fullback is to be backing up those breaks. He was nowhere. One of the reasons the ball-carriers ended up throwing silly passes was because there was no easy pass to give, because Lomax wasn't backing up. When Warrington made breaks, they had men (including their fullback), in support.

That is very telling in my view. The difference between a confident team playing well, and a low-confidence team playing badly, is the off-the ball running, both in terms of support/dummy runners, and defensive scramblers.

Yesterday, when we broke, we had no support. We struggled even to muster a dummy runner sometimes. One of the reasons we made so little ground in our sets was because you could tell who was getting the ball for a one-up hit before it was even played. Likewise, in defence, when they broke, all our players were jogging and watching to see if the fullback was going to make the tackle, allowing their ball-carrier an easy draw-and-pass to his support. When we broke, there were blue shirts everywhere, running full tilt to block options and cover potential support.

Lomax is really not playing well at all. And that's before you even get to the awful kick-offs both in attack and defence.

Can't disagree with that at the moment. He's a bit of an enigma Jonny in that he seems to be rated so highly by the staff at Saints and the majority of fans. He's been excellent fleetingly throughout his career but you'd have expected him to have kicked on a little bit more by now. I wonder if he struggles with confidence issues? He's obviously got all the ability in the world and he isn't one of the players under scrutiny for not giving his all....if anything, it looks as though he's trying a bit too hard.

On another note, who are the players Brown/McManus/Wellens are alluding to regarding not putting their all in? LMS and Turner are the first two that come to mind but have we any other candidates? I'd personally put Masoe in there. I don't think you can put Walker in there, I just don't actually think he's good enough yet to be playing for Saints. What type of team are we expecting on Friday? I'd like to think that Brown has had enough and the players he doesn't think are doing enough will be dropped.

If I was picking the team for Friday, it would be

Lomax, Makinson, Jones, Dawson, Swift, Hohaia, Walsh, Thompson, Roby, Walmesley, Soliola, Greenwood, Flanagan: Richards, Masoe, Savelio, Wellens.

Whilst I'm not Dawson's biggest fan, I couldn't criticise his effort. I'd really like to see LMS, Wilkin and Turner given a sit down. No chance with Wilkin of course.