Saints hadn't won the league title since 1975 and the Challenge Cup since 1976 when McRae took over. He won them both in hus first season.

I think some of us (me included at times) have forgotten where we were when he took over. No-one would have saved us when he arrived but so far he has done all we can ask. We won all we could last year and have won more games this season than i thought possible against teams i could never have imagined. Its our first season back and we have done as well as we could have hoped for. The stadium is out of his remit and if Myler and Turner want to go then again however hard he tries he cannot get players to stay who want away. Our style of play has had to suit our personell and if players are injured then others have to fill in and that maybe playing out of position. Im not his biggest fan by any means but im old enough to have seen some really poor teams/signings and this years team is not the worst by a long way. I appreciate that signings are a big issue for fans but for me only one player has dissapointed but even he has started to find his feet. All the others have contributed. So all in all im not sure how much more we could have expected this year. Given that we are probably one of the sides with the smallest budget we are not too bad are we?

But at the time they were flying up the ladder and with Wigan in freefall most pundits at the time had Saints down as champions elect.

My point is more along the lines that Shaun has never developed a team of relative nobodies and succeeded.
Maybe he'll succeed at this with us. It certainly takes more than 1 season to develop a decent team with the type of players we have.
Another year at least before I pass any opinion on him.

I think Mcrae has a point, we have had so many 50/50 games this season where we have failed to come out on top because of bad decition making on the field by players or their inability to embrace the pressure and turn it into points.

Even if we won 1/2 of the games we'd be further up the table which would have been a great sucess, even now i see it as a succesful season especially towards the back end.

We have been in positions to win them games but even with all the effort some players just dont have ''it'' at superleague level and thats the reason we have fallen short.

Im sure with another offseason, Mcrae will hopefully have the chance to get rid of a few and replace them with a better standard so the squad of players moves on

Great post