We were poor today and again looked like we had nothing in attack and an inability to tackle. Unfortunately even when we've won this season we've not looked great. I keep telling myself that it's pretty much a new team and that it taks time for them to gel, but there comes a point when it starts to sound a bit hollow. I appreciate that there have been a lot of injuries but you'd expect some cohesion.

To be fair to Salford, they grew in confidence as the game, threw the ball out wide and went on to gave us a spanking.

To be honest, I don't think giving the players a rollicking will work. As the Sky Monkeys were more than happy to point out, the players on the bench looked shellshocked. The last thing we need is destroy their confidence any further.

Is one possible excuse that maybe the players had one eye against next weeks game? It's got to effect them if the club are pushing to make it the biggest game of the season.

Yeah, cos I'm so far up McNama... oops, that doesn't make any sense, does it?

23 years of watching Bradford be somewhere between sublime and diabolical, not going to start chucking my toys out of the pram now because we got a gubbing at Salford. If you're feeling brave, get on Twitter and tell the players how you feel directly. Otherwise, it's all p.sh and wind, no?

I take the point that a royal wooping can come out of the blue and you shouldn't read too much into it.

But in this instance it feels like a bit more than that. It has to be set in the context of a catalogue of crap performances. Even our wins against Quins and Crusaders were pretty dire. We are as bad as at any time under Macca.

Be honest, do you feel as calm about it as you make out or are you just railing back against excessive negativity?

I have elsewhere on this same thread stated that I think it might be the worst single result Bradford have ever had in my time watching them. Am I concerned? Undoubtedly. Despite being a SM defender till the end, I hoped that Potter would quickly rectify issues that existed and so we'd have an end to throwing away big leads, appaling completion rates and woeful defence out wide.

Ten games in (the magic number!) and we're wondering whether that has happened. Peter Hood promised me at Cardiff when I happened to run into him that we would be 'competitive' and he was right. Yesterday is the first game I thought we should win that we haven't, and the manner of losing is a grave cause for concern. But look at Eddie's comment. He seems to think that any sort of balance or perspective is tantamount to treason in a time of war.

This place after a defeat is always an echo chamber of impotent rage and self-pity. I only have so much to offer right now, being on the poor end of a Monopoly pub crawl, but when I do get my head back on, I hope to explain my position more clearly. And what I said is true (in vino veritas?). London h 2003. WTF happened there? Noble out?

Well I had a good day out and won 35 quid for picking the first try scoring.

Apart from that I think the trauma of standing there watching it has been erased from my memory as a coping mechanism. I keep having flash backs though.

I blame James Child though. Pulled us up for a forward pass when Hargreaves went over and that was the pivotal moment in the match.

Yep when all else fails blame the ref.

You bloody love it. That's why you've been a mod since 1948.

@mysticeddie is available, I believe. Get on there and give 'em it.

Bulls defintely were not at the races today a very poor game ! totally unorganised in every department, potter needs to make some some real changes very soon. By the way was shad injuried ?

nope. on paternity leave apparently. major mistake in hindsight. Either shad or platt have to replace sykes thursday.

I'd have them both back in, if they are available. Walker is not good enough for a centre, he's barely good enough to get in our second row.

Well I agree it's up there with any of our worst ever SL performances.

That performance was just soft. No other word for it. As soon as any pressure was applied to the Bulls they folded. Heads seem to drop far too easily sometimes and as soon as Salford got a roll on we looked like we'd given up. We seemed to give it a good go for the first 15 mins of the first half and the first 10mins of the second half but once a decision goes against us or we make an error then the players top talking and everyone retreats into their shell and ends up taking it up the rear. Opposition sides must relish getting stuck into our lads given that they seem to give up so easily.

That performance was soooo bad I don't think it can simply be forgotten about. That the side has the ability to be so inept is worrying. Top 8 is not achievable playing like that and many more performances like that would undo all the optimisim and off field efforts to get the crowds back. It's just not acceptable.

Trouble is that Potter can only play the cards dealt to him. Everyone was so bad yesterday that he can't just drop all 17. That said we did seem incapable of defending on the edges. Our backrow and centres looked hopeless both in attack and defence and Briggs looked well out of his depth. Simple attacking plays looked beyond our backline and in defence there was no bite. How many offloads came from soft defending in the middle? How many missed tackles were there out wide thanks to players miss reading the situation or just being plain half hearted?

It makes me wonder what we do in training all week when we play as badly as that. Obviously the players are very low on confidence but how do you build that up? Macca's "team building exercises" never seemed to work. In the end I think the responsibility lies with the players to muscle up and take responsibility.

I hope that happens this week or Leeds will get 80 at Odsal on Thursday.

Once we go a couple of scores behind, I have no confidence that the team can turn it back round anymore. I suspect the players have the same mindset because the body language wasn't great out there. Even when we were 20 points down, there wasn't a massive amount of urgency. Too many of our players seem too used to being on the losing side nowadays. Confidence must be very low among the group of players right now.

The defence is a MAJOR worry right now, unless Potter can perform some sort of minor miracle with the group he currently has, we can forget any hopes of a top 8 finish.

Agreed. The lack of belief within the squad is startling at times. It only takes one mistake or one decision to go against us for you to see a visible change in attitude or body language for the worse. It's like they collectively think "here we go again" and just accept that they're going to get it.

A few times last night when we had the ball there were mistakes made because of a lack of communication. The instances when the ball from L'Strange went to the dummy runner (Elima) rather than the correct recipient or when Briggs threw it into touch or when it went to nobody or when Koppy was left kicking it all show that. It's obvious there's no talk out there, what our our senior players doing at times like that? You need them to shake others out of the malaise and get positive. If everyone just retreats into their shell it's only going to mean one thing - defeat.

When we didn't have the ball it was the same problem. The defence wasn't moving quick enough and players seemed to be tackling in ones or simply not being aggressive enough which allowed Salford to offload or simply just bust their way through. Once we got to the 60min mark last night it looked like they'd resigned themselves to getting a stuffing.

Potter's got a hell of a job to turn this lot around. If he had any illusions about the scale of the job he should know now. He's building a new team from scratch rather like he did with Catalans.

That was the worst performance I have seen. Attitude was almost resigned after we went 20 points down. No stomach for a fight. No graft.

Whilst we have had patches of good work this season, the defence has always seemed brittle - even at it's best( Cas & London).

The only (slight) silver lining I can see is that our worst performances have been away from home. Good performances at Odsal over the next few weeks are critical.

Sykes' run of good form over the last 2 games have come to a halt. I don't know if his inconsistency is due to confidence or something else but Platt is now obviously a huge defensive linchpin out wide which we are missing badly.