You make a good point. What would you do in Karl's position now?

Did the Wire get rid of Pricey?

Last I seen, Pricey got rid of Wire, with 12 month notice

Took Pricey 2 games to realise this mob were only fit for 5 drives and a Gary Owen

As I've already pointed out in my initial post to which you responded: Powell isn't just changing the playing style, he is trying to fundamentally change the culture. Liverpool and Manchester Utd are 1 and 2 in terms of overall achievement, so a major cultural overhaul wasn't required. Despite being arguably the best resourced team over c.20 years, we still haven't cracked it.

Also, with this in mind, you or any other fan can't expect Powell or anyone to come in and have things fixed or partially fixed at this stage knowing what needs to be done if you expect us to complete long-term for all honours.

Powell has identified the problems that many of us fans have been witnessing and has the balls to do something about. I can guarantee, if we get a coach in who is happy to keep this rotten bunch of underperformers, then nothing will change ie. we'll be spending more than anyone to a achieve first round knockouts in playoffs.

These players threw Smith under the bus at the end of his tenure, couldn't be d for the majority of Price's rein, and are happy to throw Powell under the bus as well.The problem is staring most of us Wire fans in the face.

Powell has a proven record of improving players and teams, over a long time, playing attractive rl.
This bunch of players have a consistent record of underachieving under 3 different coaches.

Give him chance to remove the major problem and judge him then. If you don't, mark my words, we ain't going anywhere good. For those that don't have the patience and can't see the bigger picture then make some suggestions for more coaches - there are loads out there. We could give them 6 months and then if that doesn't work, let's get another one for 6 months and keep doing that - we might get lucky.

The closer football analogy for us is Arsenal going from Wenger/Emery to Arteta. High profile players on good money who had been indulged by the previous regime and had their egos massaged for treading water, plus some baggage of poor signings under contract. The Arteta era has been turbulent and results have been inconsistent but the one clear point of progress is that dead wood has been moved on and the younger players and Arteta's new signings have freshened up the team. I'm hoping this is how we develop with Powell.

This has basically been my critique of Wire for about the past 5 years.

Although on point 3, I wouldn't call it bottling big finals because that sounds like they couldn't handle the pressure and they actually provided the best "big game" performance I've seen from a Wire team in the 2019 Challenge Cup final. But failing to turn up was a regular issue with those players, it happened a lot in normal league games as well, so it was unsurprising that it happened sometimes in finals (notoriously against Catalans in 201icon_cool.gif.

Then point 3 relates to point 4 about lack of resilience and mental toughness, in that there was never any way back if we got into a bad situation. Leeds, Wigan and Saints have games where they are crap for 30 minutes then somebody steps up and takes charge and turns the game around. With Wire you never had that - once we got in a rut they all went down together. You would get threads on here periodically hero-worshipping players when they were in a good run of form, usually when they signed a new contract. Ratchford in particular would usually get a thread at least once a season hailing him as our greatest ever SL signing or whatever. The question I always asked was, next time we're in a losing situation watch Ratchford and see how he plays, does he step it up and turn the game round or does he stay anonymous like the rest. It wasn't just a Ratchford thing either, it applies to all our senior players. Even Hill who was a favourite of mine, when we were in a losing situation he would get angry and give away penalties rather than show the discipline and mental toughness that we needed.

Our senior players were not leaders and we didn't have players who would raise their game and lift others. If you want one single reason why we didn't win a Grand Final and Leeds, Wigan and Saints did it's that.

Agree on all these good points you've made. And from your last paragraph, I believe it's the club culture within that has provided these standout 3 teams with players that can raise their game and lift others. I'm certain Powell can see this and that's why he's trying to make fundamental root and branch changes.

I think it's both. Winning mentality around the club and players that get better when the pressure is on. Players who can execute skills when under pressure against quality opposition.

You just knew when Leeds got their 3rd try we were gone.

Sally is dead right, Ratchford goes missing and is anonymous when games get tough. I am struggling to recall his last stand out game. Widdop and Williams have been very dissapointing in general under 2 coaches now. King doesnt even look like a centre anymore and our second row is not fit for purpose.

We desperately need a real leader and captain in this rebuild too.

Resign!

I think there are some leaders who are "born not made" like Sinfield and Peacock and then if the culture is right that mentality basically gets absorbed by other senior players: JJB, Burrow, McGuire, Leuluai.

In Wigan you had O'Loughlin as the born leader but one thing that really impressed me about Wigan in the Shaun Wane era was how mature their young Academy graduates were and how calm and mentally resilient they were right when they stepped into the first team.

I think in these teams with a good culture they are good at educating their players on good rugby sense and how to read changing game situations and diagnose and remedy problems in real time, and also have leaders who can manage the psychological aspect of it: kick some asses when players are coasting or not switched on, and also re-energise the confidence and belief in players who are putting in the effort but whose game has gone flat because their confidence has drained away after a couple of mistakes.

I agree to some degree, but he didn't have that much money really as the vast majority of the squad were already signed up. Oli Holmes for 1 is a very strange one. He's a tried and tested second rower who is solid in defense and attack so the fact it isn't happening here is odd. Could being shifted from 11 where he's always played, to the opposite side of the pitch at 12 be affecting him?
Now i'm backing Powell to fix the club long term as i believe he can change us for the better. But the current results are frightening. I get that a big group of our players are leaving and there may well be some players who don't buy in to Powells methods. But the way we are playing is mind boggling.
Powell isn't a bad coach so i don't understand our dramatic dip in form, this points to the players also not doing what they should. The club is a mess at the minute but it hasn't been amazing for awhile.
Chopping and changing a coach all the time won't give a coach tome to impliment his tactics and get the right players in. That being said we NEED to win against Wakefield or we are in very real danger of relegation.

What is important is that the fans get a sniff of improvement to performances through an improved & settled squad in the second half of the season . No good promising jam tomorrow when the club will be trying to flog season tickets in 6 months time & we all know how many false dawns there have been at the Wire. There have been plenty of false dawns in my 60 years of supporting the club.

One thing to remember with Powell was he also had to do a lot of "squad surgery" when he took over at Leeds from Dean Lance as they were carrying a lot of senior players who were underperforming and the club was in a frustrating state of underachievement.

Powell moved on guys like Andy Hay, Darren Fleary, Anthony Farrell, Ryan Sheridan, Jamie Mathiou plus the big gun NRL signings Brett Mullins, Tonie Carroll, Brad Clyde and Robbie Mears. Iestyn Harris also departed for RU soon after he took over.

In their place he signed Andrew Dunemann, Chris McKenna, Matt Adamson, David Furner, Gary Connolly, Adrian Vowles, Willie Poching - who were all good reliable senior professionals to create a positive environment in which he could bring through the guys from the youth team - Rob Burrow, Mark Calderwood, Danny McGuire, Richie Mathers, Ryan Bailey, Danny Ward, Matt Diskin, JJB.

Leeds didn't implode like we are doing now probably because he had access to a much stronger pool of senior players to recruit from and also their youth talent that he was bringing through was far superior to ours, but there was a bit of turbulence in Leeds at the time and I expect Powell ruffled feathers by moving on so many of the old guard particularly as some of those guys would have been his former teammates dring his playing days.

That squad surgery job he did at Leeds was successful and he left a team for TS which was ready to challenge for the title (and won the GF in TS first season).

And Ryan Sheridan is now his right hand man.

You're not wrong but you've overlooked the part that Hetherington played. Signings for example: it's probable that he held a lot more sway than Powell in that regard. Then there was the masterstroke of recognising Powell's limitations and replacing him with Tony Smith. At that time, the Leeds golden generation had only narrowly lost a cup final to the then dominant Bradford side. There was no crisis and fans weren't calling for Powell to go. As far as many were concerned, Leeds was a side on the up. Really ruthless stuff, both from Powell who ditched a load of former team mates and from Hetherington who pretty much did the same to Powell. Maybe it's that kind of ruthlessness that Powell's meant to bring to Warrington, rather than simply coaching the 17 on the park?