Despite our league position I'm not worried. To me Brown is trying different things and clearly is waiting for a clear out at the end of the year, he's no fool and I'm still confident he can improve our side

But will he be given the chance? There are rumours Wellens, Gardner, Laffranchi and Flanagan have all got new deals. There will only be Perry, Meli and Puletua that will leave at the end of the year and those include 2 of our better players. Unless we pull some very, very decent forwards, we're going to be worse still next year.

The problem is even if he has the players he wants he will still tinker with the team, just look at Huddersfield for the proof.

From all those players, I'd give Flanagan a new deal, Puletua at a push. Keeping any of the others would be stupid.

Flanaghan is nothing more than a squad player, he's ok to fill in if we've got injuries.

Wellens and Gardner to sign new deals?







You win, Saints. You win.

Having looked at the fixtures of all of the teams around us upto Hull in the table and looking at the improvement I saw on Monday night. (I thought our attacking structure looked better, defensively we still need a good amount of work) and with Lomax on the verge of a return I fully expect us to beat our next four opponants (Bradford, Salford, Hull KR, Cas) that will probably move us up to the heady heights of 7th. But there would probably be a gap then between us and 8th and 9th and I expect only a 3 point gap between us and 4th then with us to play 2 of the teams above us (Catalan and Hull). We would obviously need to improve from where we are to start to beat both of those teams away from home but some wins, some confidence and some better players playing to their potential could se us do it.

From the fixtures over the next 4 rounds I am expecting the following teams to get the following points

Hull - 6 (possibly 8 )
Catalan - 4
Leeds - 6
Bradford - 2
Hull KR - 2

But the number of occasions that the above teams play each other (including us) in the next 4 rounds could mean anything is possible, plus if Huddersfield do fall apart then that will have a big bearing as they play 4 of those teams.

Its all a bit speculative but I prefer to look at the positives rather than the negatives

The Run in over the next 4 games. I agree that we should win all of ours, if we don't then I will be concerned. Last year when I got concerned Royce was sacked a week later so my concerns, could be other peoples worries.

So this is how I would predict the next four games

Hull on 20 + 4 = 24
Dragons 20 + 6 = 26
Rhinos 19 + 8 = 27 (leeds have 5 games in this same time period)
Bulls 16 + 2 = 18
Rovers 16 + 2 = 18
Saints 15 + 8 = 23

I'd agree that's probably puts us about 7th a point of 6th and 3 of 5th.
But then we need to continue the run into some tough games.

There's no point looking at the next 4 games and saying we are going to win them. The way we've played this season means there are no guaranteed victories and we simply need to win our next one and then we can move on. Hopefully Lomax will return this week or for the Salford game and we can keep Roby & Soliola fit. We have half a chance then.

I think we will only win 4/5 of our remaing fixtures. Not sure where that would leave us in the table but its going to be a struggle to make the 8.

The way we've played in the last few weeks, with O'Brien in the side and Lomax back, we'll beat a lot of teams IMO.

Very optimistic.

IMO we've been awful the last few weeks.