Is this critic of Agar fare?
When we were flying high last season..his name was hardly mentioned. Yet now, like when he first arrived, he is barraged. ?

Personally I think he is a yes man so I lay blame of dips and errors squarely at the feet of TS.

I would agree as he is basically feeding down and following tony smiths instruction, if this is the set up I would question who ever thought it would be a good idea to take a lot of smiths responsibilities away from him and passed them over to agar and if smith was actually ok with the arrangement sees were paying smith quite a bit of money to do less work nowadays ??

and its a fair point that when we lay well smith its the credit but when we don't perform agar is to blame I would say they are both as culpable as each other for both our good play and also when we play poorly however it would also be part of mr smiths job that when we are not performing to adapt and identify the problems and weaknesses of the team and look to strengthen their position through new players or more intensive training of the players in that position ??? clearly these have not been resolved tho

It would seem we're the only club in super league which has such a coaching structure as it is, or at the least, how we think the structure is..
Without being inside the structure, we can only speculate. If Agar was to go, it would be down to a perceived closeness to Tony Smith and his previous track record which I'm sure he would be disappointed with, fairly or unfairly.

Agar has been praised by some of the players for the work he does with them, so certainly not so cut and dry as to what is going on behind closed doors.

Toby King is a championship player at best. Unfortunately for us fans he is on smiths 'favourites' list and will always play if fit. Since our last major trophy in 2012 ask yourselves if any player no longer with us has been replaced with someone of equal/better ability. (bar myler for sandow, but that hardly turned out well!)

Having read this post I believe that you actually are Moe Syslak and I think you are a bit quick to have the opinion that Toby King belongs in the Championship "at best" I think he's starting out and is potentially a decent centre. We aren't exactly blessed in this position so probably deserves a chance before being written off...

"Unfortunately for us fans..." sorry I can't agree with your sentiment here and that's putting it politely just what has the young lad done wrong?

Ive yet to see him have anything like a good game. It's not his fault, he just isn't at the level required for the top echelons of super league which is where we should be.

Hmm don't see it with king either. Yet to see him show a tiny glimpse of some pure ability that might get me out of my seat. No offence to the lad either...he may and probably will improve but I've yet to see him beat a man with his feet, find his winger with a great ball ( not even seen him draw a man) or display an outstanding defence to make up for his attacking deficiencies. Livett has been lobbed into an unfamiliar position in a woefully out of sorts team and already shown more rugby talent than Toby king. Sorry if that's harsh but that's my humble opinion.

Wasn't Toby King a utility player a few short weeks ago & is now being billed as a centre by Mr Smith ?

No, he has always played centre apart from when he was with Meltham as a kid.

Here are some recent highlights of Toby King. It's difficult to judge a player from these since they take the best bits from all the games, but I think there is more than enough info here to show that he is a talented player and quite capable of beating his man. He doesn't have the physical presence of Atkins, but has more ball handling skills in his little finger than Atkins does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkSE0nviTw4 He is still only 20 and has played ?? around 24 games for us. Just IMO, but I would rate King and perhaps Livett alongside Currie as the best players to come through the Academy in the past 10 years. If King ends up playing in the Championship or League 1 we seriously need to think about closing our youth system down and simply buying in players.

Here are some recent highlights of Toby King. It's difficult to judge a player from these since they take the best bits from all the games, but I think there is more than enough info here to show that he is a talented player and quite capable of beating his man. He doesn't have the physical presence of Atkins, but has more ball handling skills in his little finger than Atkins does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkSE0nviTw4 He is still only 20 and has played ?? around 24 games for us. Just IMO, but I would rate King and perhaps Livett alongside Currie as the best players to come through the Academy in the past 10 years. If King ends up playing in the Championship or League 1 we seriously need to think about closing our youth system down and simply buying in players.

Toby was our best 3/4 when he burst on to the scene, until his terrible injury.

He will get back to that for soon.

I never bought into the Toby King hype train early doors, but last year he display some good touches and elusive running. I think he'll turn out to be a good centre for us.

You are right of course, Currie came through Wigan Scholarship (U16's) then we picked him up and put him through the Wire Academy.

If you wan't to look at our squad numbers 1-17 then the local Wigan area players are Ratchford, Russell, Brown, Hughes, Dwyer. I don't think Ratchford was part of the Wigan Academy, he joined Salford at 18/19. Ditto for Dwyer who is Ince Rose Bridge, I don't know about Kev Brown it was a long time ago. The Wire Academy players are Evans, Currie, Cooper, Dwyer and George King. So probably something like an even split between the two Academies.

If you wish to drill down a bit further, both Hughes and Currie were Golbourne lads. I don't know if that could be said to be Wigan - Wire Yed (also a Golbourne boy) always maintained that it was more Warrington. Then of course the King brothers were part of Huddersfield Academy after leaving Meltham.


So it all depends on how you draw the line between 'local' players and your Academy produced players I suppose.

I disagree about Toby King I think he's got something about him. I think he's our best centre already.