Its ok, I'm not stirring things up here, I was just curious as to what sort of standard Wire would have to slip to for people to question TS's position at the club, or is the guy virtually untouchable and can have a job here as long as he wants it?

I think its obvious that the next season or so will see a rebuilding job with the team.....If that rebuild went awry, would people question TS, or again, would people allow him a few mistakes.

Personally, I believe Smith has done enough with our club to be allowed to leave when he wants and not at the demand of fans possibly turning against him in the future, or an impatient board, similar to Salford's new owner.....However, you would hope that TS himself would know when to go if things did go downhill at some point and not outstay his tenure as Paul Cullen did - I was never Cullen's biggest fan, though his first couple of years definitely set the platform for what we have now and we should be grateful for that, but he did not deserve the end to his spell of coach that he got.

Should Tony Smith resign practically every club in Superleague would want to sign him up...To compare him with Paul Cullen is verging on the ridiculous. Mr Cullen has found his natural level...gladhanding at Widnes or he was when I last heard.

NO

Stop now

As Jim Royle would say "My A£@?" Tony Smith has took us way to where every fan wanted us to be. We fell short of lifting the big one last year but who would swap our trips to Wembley for anything?

Look, I don't want to be misunderstood - I'm not questioning Tony Smith's position in the slightest, I'm just wondering if he is now basically untouchable?

I know it seems unthinkable at present, but would a season of mediocrity (mid to low end of the table finish for example) be acceptable for him?....Maybe 2, or even 3 seasons of poor displays be allowed to go?

Personally, I don't think it would ever happen - If we did slip, I think Smith would be the first to realise and would probably walk away himself....He doesn't have the emotional connection with the club that Cullen obviously had and which probably led to Cullen staying longer than he should have.

I admit this is all theoretical, but I was just curious to people's thoughts.

I think its fair to say that Brian Noble had a similar reputation in his Bradford days.....

Listen Dita's.
I know you've had a 3 weekend (Everton and Wire), but don't make us all reach for the bleach

I think fans will start to have a whinge at the end of this season. The attack will be based around "he didn't recruit anybody in the off season and that was a mistake" even though during the off season nobody was saying we should have been recruiting as there was nobody obvious on the market that would have been an improvement on what we had. But that will be the line of attack - that we paid the price for not signing someone.

But realistically nobody will be calling for him to be sacked for a long time. He has won enough capital with Warrington fans to ensure he will have support for many trophyless years ahead like Arsene Wenger at Arsenal who still has a sizeable portion of the fanbase that regard him as untouchable.

It took a while for a real split amongst the fans to emerge about Cullen, who hadn't won anything. 2003 his reputation was sky high amongst our fans, when we moved into the HJ he was doing that walk across the pitch to get the applause to milk it. After a rocky patch in 2004 the first questions started to be asked but then those got lost in the excitement of Simon Moran's takeover and signing Gleeson etc. 2005 when we had our best year for a decade and signed Andrew Johns the questions died down. It was 2006 when the fan base got really divided. A lot turned on Cullen early that season, I switched over into the doubters around the time we lost to Hull KR in the Cup, but I think at the end of that season the dividing lines were drawn. Cullen had his hardcore loyalists that would always support him because of his Warrington credentials, and the rest of the fanbase had sussed by that point that we would never win a trophy with him in charge and we had to go through another 18 months of basically that argument.

In Smith's case I suspect Smith will leave on his own terms and it may be sooner than we expect or would like. I'd be surprised if he was here beyond the end of 2014, so I don't think there will be time for any real anti-Smith campaign to start up amongst our fans. We might have won the last trophy we are going to win under Smith though, at Wembley last year. It might be the last trophy we win for a while, although we are unlikely to slip back to the bad days of old and none of our rivals are pulling away so I think we will be up there, even if we aren't winning, kind of in an Arsenal or Saints type of way, rather than going the way of Bradford.

Thats a ridiculous way to describe Cullen.. Cullen left this club in a fabulous position he just couldnt take the group any further but we should never ridicule what Cullen did.

Tony smith was left with a fabulous group of players that he could take to a cup final by making just two additions Richie Mathers and Mickey Higham, everyone else bar Lee Briers was a paul cullen signing.... gladhanding what the chuff does that mean ...???

If Paul Cullen cant be compared to Tony Smith then why where there still more Cullen signings on the field on Friday than Tony Smith ones... Lord Tony smith thinks they are that good he didnt bother making any signings of his own this year he simply let one if his signings Retire.

Its early in the eason and we could win nothing or win everything by November but should it go wrong and smith leaves before his contract is up a new coach would come in to the club with a shocking squad. Something that could never be labelled at Cullen. I'm glad smith signed a new contract because I want to see him rebuild the squad...

Give Smith all the plaudits in the world by all means but dont make Cullen out to be a shocker....

Well I was going to start a thread on here during the quieter period this week after the 'Saints funeral'. This question really leads into it.

I was going to say that TS has reached an interesting point in his tenure. There are many examples in football and rugby where a new manager comes in and does really well with a group of players, winning cups and reaching finals. But I think TS is approaching the 'Alex Ferguson moment'. I have just looked up Alexander Chapman Ferguson and found that he has now been at ManU for 26 yrs. I couldn't be bothered trawling through the number of cups he has won, I am not a football fanatic and TBH, I don't really care for the man much. But he is certainly quite an amazing manager. He has done what very few others have achieved. He has not simply won trophies with one group of players, but has completely re-built teams, and gone on to further success.

So yes, TS has been very successful over the past 4 years. But can he now rebuild Wire over the next 2 years and go on to win again ? That is a far bigger challenge, and if manages it, he really will go down as one of the very best RL managers.

Without returning to a very interesting thread we had a week or two ago, my worry is where he will find the players to do the rebuild. Oz is too expensive, there only seem to be limited opportunities over here, and even if our youngsters make the grade, they are not going to transform into top notch players overnight. Worse (more wailing and teeth gnashing from the faithful) there will surely be some barren period even if he does emerge with another winning team ?

He left us in 7th place in the table with 14 points from 15 games, with a fair few 'fabulous' players in his squad

Not sure who you are counting as Cullen signings other than Bridge, Grix and Michael Monaghan...Smith signed Hodgson, Atkins, Joel Monaghan, Ratchford, Myler and Hill.

Cullen's signings weren't masterstrokes of undiscovered gems he signed ready made already established players with Simon Moran's money. Some like Reardon, Rauhihi, Vinnie Anderson, Johnson, Logan Swann, never reproduced their previous standards under Cullen, others like Monaghan and King didn't really start to perform till Cullen had left and Smith came in.

But if we are talking about quality of squad left, the squad Cullen left Smith was nowhere near as strong as the squad Smith left McLennan and later McDermott, and Warrington have been playing catch up with Leeds ever since...

NOT ME

Yes, Tony is going to have to oversee quite an overhaul of the playing squad in the next few years but he isn't unique in that as the quality and number of overseas players diminish and the dual-reg system beds in.

Saints have already started and, despite what their fans might think after Friday, are still a work in progress.
Hull have had big changes in the last 18 months and are still some way from challenging for grand finals
Wigan have lost a lot of players since last year in crucial areas

We are enjoying an unprecedented period of success in the modern history of the club and what is needed now is a steady hand and evolution, note revolution.

The question I'd ask is, who else would you trust with the clubs future?

There is a firm commitment from the club to develop the team from within so the team won't be re-built by signing players. The only issue I have with that is that the changes to the academy age groupings has become disconnected and has caused a potential problem with development.

No doubt though that the team for next season and even more so 2015 will look very different.