Mcrae is a winner and he is beginning to create a squad with "that" inside them

he wasn't at the Bunnies!

He has been lucky.

I can't see what McRae's achieved this season to attract some of the latest positive comments.

I've just read his comments on the BBC sport website about how unlucky Salford have been, i.e. the number of matches we've lost by a narrow margin and that if these had been victories we'd have been contending a Top 8 play off place...........Come On! every other side in the table could claim that.

The fact is, we're next to bottom and deservedly so, the table at the end of the season doesn't lie.

I'd love to believe we'll improve next season, but from the evidence I see every week, our past record of poor signings and continued uncertainty surrounding our future I just can't see it.

Of course, I will continue to turn up and support the team again next season, but I'm afraid it's more in hope than expectation.

Mcrea. McRea. Mcrae. Mc Rae. Mc rea. MC Hammer.
No, no, no, no, no and no.

McRae.
Yes.

As for his history as a coach. Succeeded at Saints with a ready made quality team which still required some coaching.
Had success with Gateshull. Picked the best of 2 average teams and ended up with a pretty decent record.
Souths. Pre Russell Crowe era. Struggled throughout his time there which I believe lasted 18 months as head coach before being moved into a Director of Football roll for a short time. Vanished into the wilderness a little while before taking over here.

Point is. He's yet to be proven as a coach that can develop a squad from scratch and succeed. I'm sure he'll have learnt lots about this in the last 9 months or so. Maybe next year is the real big test of his tenure?

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