Cracking signing. Awesome prospect. He'll learn a great deal playing with the likes of Briers and is bound to improve alongside much better players than some of the crap he had to play with at Salford.

Bothered about the fee. Bothered about his 'dodgy' defence (Briers' defence has improved massively in 6 months with Smith). Bothered that apparently Ratchford is the 'good' one (maybe we'll take him too if it suits). Yes this may sound arrogant. Bothered. Bring it on.

Split personality.

What?

Its now £200k for Atkins by Tuesday I expected it to be £1Mill on him and Myler each.

If the fee thats being banded around is to be believed then you could have got the finished article in Rob Burrow for similar money or just a bit more, their is no doubt that Richie Myler is a talent but i would have liked to have seen us sign a more attack minded scrum half, he is a great support player with a good short kicking game, he will need to work on his defence.

I value Tony Smith`s opinion and judgement more than mine so i`ll back his opinion on our signings.

The transfer fee is irrelevant, I don't care how much it is. £200,000 may sound a lot of money but as we are up to the max salary cap, what else are we to spend it on? Add in the spare cash the board may be willing to put in, and it's not a significant amount of money. Simon Cowel spends that much on his teeth each year, don't know about Moran.

All that really matters is: do you get a return on the percentage of the salary cap that you allocate to a particular player?

The transfer fee has no bearing on what is available to spend on players, as unlike football, we have a salary cap. All that matters is how much are we paying him a year? Which nobody knows.

If I had to guess, it wont be mega bucks, not in the King region by a long way.

You couldn't have Burrow because his wages would be more.

Obviously i don't think it's that much but you outbidded Leeds who have been tracking him for the last 2 years and really wanted his signiture. Leeds is also his home town and where he coaches so the wage offer must also be very good!

Maybe we can do a Wigan and get his Mrs on the cleaning staff to pay her for a hour a week just like they did for that little Ginger sod Radlinski.

Just looking at some stats, which obviously do not tell the whole story, but a couple of days ago, I compared Myler to Long, and their defensive stats are nigh on identical. Now we all know that Long isn;t the best defensively, but if Myler at his age can defend at a level that the so called best 7 in Britain can, then it's not a bad starting point. His defence is also better than Briers, who most will admit has been much better this year.

To provide some figures for comparison on tackle completion:

Burrows (89.3%)
Tomkins (88.3%)
van Dijk (87.0%)
Bird (85.8%)
Brough (85.6%)
Deacon (84.1%)
Long (83.6%)
Orr (83.4%)
Myler (82.3%)
Dobson (82.0%)
Chase (80.0%)
Briers (78.9%)
Sherwin (77.0%)

Whilst Myler is towards the bottom of this list, his percentage is pretty comparable to plenty of more experienced players.

The likes of Dobson and Chase have received rave reviews this year, yet their defence is worse than Myler's, yet the way some of the Salford fans go on, you'd think he has missed every tackle this year.

IMO, put him in a better defensive line up, and he will do a good job, I have no major concerns with his defensive abilities after his first year in SL.

In terms of attack, he also is 6th for assists (15) and has bagged 11 tries himself. If he does that next year for us, I'll be pretty happy with him.

Myler literally defends on the wing. Most other SH's/SO's defend in between the centre and the SR/LF.