Tony Gigot

Quote: Dita's Slot Meter "I don't think anyone is suggesting he's a bad player. Just that he's not produced much that makes you suddenly think you've seen the second coming of Briers, John Woods, or any top half back you can care to remember.

Probably comes down to what I hinted at last week and that's that us fans can be too keen sometimes to build up youngsters who, in reality, have produced very little to warrant all the expectation of them.

Also, and I think it's a classic modern day social media habit where a player has to be either a bad player or a top player, when, in reality again, the vast majority hover somewhere between mediocre/average and quite good - I suspect Dean is floating somewhere in that large pool of players.'"

You get young players coming through at Saints/Wigan/Leeds, and within a few games you can see something special there. There's a maturity in their play, an ability to take charge of the game and early on impose themselves on their SL peers.

When young players come through at Wire, before they have ever really performed in SL you get loads of hype and demands that we build the future around them. Then you get a rearguard of fans who cling to this narrative and just explain away the lack of performance. "He just needs more time.....Wigan or Saints would persevere with him.....the coach has messed him about.....the coach hates him" then inevitably they end up in the Championship with everyone saying they could have been a great but our rubbish coaching staff didn't develop them.