Kevin Penny..

God damn it he's Championship at best. No where near the standard we should be looking at.

I've no problem with his desire and effort but he's not good enough for a side trying to get back to OT.

Chris Riley was a better winger and for me it's just another marker of our dramatic fall from grace that he's back in the squad and touted as a first choice.

I like Penny but he still makes some terrible 'reads'.
I don't think overall there's much to chose between Riley and Penny to be honest.

Lineham seems to be 'the great hope' and I've seen some really good stuff from him, but also some '%^&* ups'.

The fact that we're not clear about Joel leaves lots of questions unanswered.

The fact no-one has a clear idea of who will be at f/b, wing, in the centres, in the halves - the whole of the backs - is a real issue.
TS can't keep chopping and changing like he's done this year. It simply doesn't work in my book.
Forwards positions are a little clearer, but I still think we need a good quality prop.

Maybe the manager has an idea who will be playing where next season. Who knows he might still have an ace up his sleeve that we don't know about.

^Agree with the post above from Paul Youane. Next year's team will absolutely be better than this year's - and I can't believe some people are criticising Sandow already. I think there's going to be a few too many changes for them to gel straight away, but a mixed bag of results in the early part of the season, followed by a real push for the top four and beyond is what I'm expecting and hoping for. 2017 could be stronger again with a less drastic overhaul required and next season's team having a year of experience together.

I would absolutely stick with Smith for the next two years too. Give him the chance to make it work with a hugely changed squad from the 2010-2013 teams. Since then we've been weak but no one can dispute the investment now and Smith is the man for me. If he fails then so be it, but I'm not going to judge a coach with his track record on the last two seasons.

That may be true....but crucially it is not better than any of our cup winning teams or grand final losing teams. ....

Its poor in comparison. ....

The only thing that gives me a glimmer of hope is hopefully we can have a 6 and 7 set in stone from pre season onwards in Gidley and sandow.

I don't think any team in Super League right now is as good as those teams, with the possible exception of Leeds who are about to lose their "Briers and Morley" in Sinfield and Peacock.

Similarly our best teams weren't as good as the great Saints and Bradford sides of 10-15 years ago.

Whoever wins Super League next year won't be on the level of those teams, but will win it because they won't be competing against anyone who is on that level.

I agree with a lot of that but our outside backs aren't particularly great. Ratchford isn't a fullback, Lineham is a half decent winger and Ormsby/Penny are okay and we have poor centres compared to a number of other clubs. That will not win us SL, might not make top 4, might just.

Coming from an eternal pessimist, we will be fine next season. We will NOT be as poor as we have been this year.

I think we all have to accept that we had three fantastic chances to win the Grand Final and blew it big time - on all occasions we were the best team in the competition. We lost out to the experience of Leeds in the semi then the final the following year, then Smith's decision not to have Hodgson at least on the bench ultimately cost us against the bully boy tactics of Wigan.
This season has been poor as a result of losing experienced players, injuries, poor recruitment and poor team selection. Players who have been brought in to fill a shirt - King, Patton, Philbin - have been dropped as soon as the usual suspects have recovered from injury despite the fact they might have outperformed them!
Another factor is that there have been no obvious choices to replace Smith - it's like Alex Ferguson at United in some respects but without the trophies!

Daryl Powell is most definitely capable of taking over from tony smith. In fact I would go as far say he would do a better job with this years wire team than smith has

That's not pessimism that's law of averages

I haven't read all the threads since last night, so this has probably been mentioned already, but after beating Saints we recorded at least one win against every team in Super League this season other than Huddersfield. We don't have a bad track record against Huddersfield so although full credit to them for their three wins over us this year, I'm not overly worried about them in general.

Considering how woefully poor we've played at times this year, I see that as a big reason for optimism. It's a far cry from the days when we knew before the game had even kicked off against one of the top clubs that we were almost certainly beaten, and obviously the decade of misery against Saints.

Inconsistent, yes, but we've proved ourselves to still be good enough to beat ten out of the eleven teams we faced. That's not a bad platform to regroup and build from.

Add "the thugs" to that list

We beat them at home?

All-in-all not a bad season in the end. I predicted a mid-table finish because we have a squad with a number of flaws and we've suffered a lot of injuries, and we finished mid-table with a 0.5 winning record and a +78pd (so not a negative in either stat, just). That'll do for me this season. Bang on my prediction.

I think we've addressed a number of the squad flaws for next season and the drain of players and arrival of many new faces will freshen the place up in the two-year wake after our really good squad that we had from 2010-2013. It still won't be perfect and still might not be enough to make the four but I think we'll put a bigger challenge in to try and get there.