The hold up with Drinkwater is over some kind of severance pay from Catalan.
He is still under contract and doesn’t have to leave Catalan, his is/was on £110k there and will be earning £30k less per season at Wire.
Allegedly telling Catalan to split the difference to £15k and he will sign for Wire.
The French club won’t agree, so Drinkwater won’t complete. Allegedly.

This is easily solved, depending on what we are prepared to do to get Drinkwater. I assume his salary is a cap issue, not a case of us refusing to match his Cats salary? In that case we pay a £30k transfer fee for Drinkwater and Cats pay his severance demands, without losing a penny. Simples. And not beyond cap rules.

BTW when does pre-season start? We can't really afford to be without our normal halfback pairing for pre-season, unless its conditioning only and not skills early on.

I assume it starts in the next week or so, unless powell feels starting early last year was a mistake? Also as far as i'm aware Vaughn & McGuire are still in Aus, as is Dufty, and Kasiano is still in France so i'm assuming there's no immediate start for it.
Also on the hooker being a weak point i don't believe that's the case in 2023. Daz Clark will find his top form again behind our pack, he's had a full off season which will do his body the world of good, and he'll get a full pre-season. Also ritating him with Walker will do him the world of good. I think we look good at hooker. And with Drinkwater and Williams in the half we look strong there. Wing we look strong, centres are ok but not the best. Behind a bigger more dominant pack Currie will hit good form again and Nicholson looks good. We look good across the park. Strong aggressive forward pack, and skill and pure speed around the pack. I understand the pessimistic feelings with this year but i have a great feeling for next year. We have pack Leaders in the likes of Vaughn and McGuire, if we let Drinkwater run the show more and let Williams roam free that will cause Havoc. Walker and Dufty talk alot on the pitch and help direct play. I genuinely think we'll be a much more cohesive squad next year, and play as an actual Team. I can't wait, and i didn't have this feeling for 2022 so i'm going with my gut feeling, and that feeling is good

But ... the best fit England Centre is currently Callum Watkins. I reckon our lads are OK.
There are not many UK Centres about.
To sign a decent centre we'd need to offload one off the overseas quota.

just my over reactive imagination, if it was Drinkwater, wgy is it not announced, perhaps its someone still playing in the world cup.
can we sign the George Williams that plays for England

That’s a No, we can’t fit that version under the cap, we have to make do with the one we got

Think mid table would be a good result with this squad.

Anyway it will give the Powell-out lobby a good argument because they can demand that "second season we need to be top of the league after 3 games or he's out" etc. Pretty much any coach would struggle to make top 4 with this squad.

The grim future I can see is that we have a mediocre season, jettison Powell and end up with a downgrade at coach as no elite coaches are interested and so we just pick up someone who is lucky to have their shot in SL and the general downgrading of the club's on field infrastructure continues.

Why is Top 4 not achievable? I mean we have no scrum half or centre, but assuming we fill those positions and Powell turns out the be the messiah after all.

PS : I have seen no posts on here saying "top of the league after 3 games or out". I've seen plenty say after 6 games we will know if there is progress.

I completely disagree that this is a mid-table team, this is a quality squad with a few weaker but still not weak positions. We'll easily be in the top 4 with this squad.

No elite coaches are available. Nor were they available when we were replacing Price. Nor will they be available at any point in the short to mid-term, unless we class an untried Aussie assistant as 'elite'. Price anyone? We're the second biggest club in terms of income after Leeds, and they just signed up an unwanted Aussie who coached Bradford in the lower leagues. I think he lost his job to John Kear?

Powell's record may look poor in his one year at Warrington, but his record over the last two decades blows any other potential candidates out of the water.

If Powell isn't the answer we'd better pray that we can miraculously unearth some gem from the NRL reserves comp. I'm not holding my breath, and I think our problems go far deeper than the coach's style. Hopefully we're fixing that.

That is exactly the problem. If we get rid of Powell we'll probably be in for guys like Rowley, Agar or Poching.

I honestly cannot understand where all of this negativity is coming from with our team.

Let's start with Daryl Powell... Has he ever been considered a bad coach? No... Does one poor season at a new club make him a bad coach? No.
He talks a lot about accountability and self reflection, and lets face it, he's a smart man/coach. We believed that because we could offer more than Castleford, it would be an easy step up for Powell to start challenging for trophies straight away. I definitely expected a good season, but we always knew that a potential rebuild was taking place based on comments DP made about contracts and culture. In time, he will settle in like he did with Castleford, but he will have better players at his disposal.

Onto the forwards. I don't know why some people are still treating it as some sort of gimmick. Like that's all we're going to be good for. We have Dudson, Kasiano, Harrison, Vaughan, Mikaele and Bullock who will all be effective. This is what we wanted. We said the pack was too small last season and we were right. Now it has not only been corrected, but we have quite possibly the biggest pack in Super League.

With the backs, and starting with the spine which would be Dufty, Williams, Drinkwater (Ratchford/Dean/Hayes) and Clark, we'd have at worst a Top 5 spine in SL but I think it's at least Top 3 behind Wigan and then you can make an argument for Saints, Leeds, Huddersfield and Salford just on the spine. We know Drinkwater is a reliable player, we know Williams and Clark can light up SL, and we have Dufty at FB who looked dangerous even with an injury + fatigue from lack of game time in the NRL. He's also the fastest player in SL. With our centres, as much as I'm in agreement that it may be lacking, they're not so stupid that they don't know what lines to run and when to pass it off. Ratchford does sometimes slow the play down, as does Mata'utia, but Minikin is no slouch at full fitness and Wrench has the ability to be one of the best in SL when he's fully fit and more experienced. Players like Currie and Nicholson can thrive behind this forward pack as well.

We have a "Top 2, not 2" forward pack, and a minimum Top 5 spine, with a good coach that prides himself on being self-critical. And of course I admit, it could all fall apart again, which is even the case with Saints if Wellens is so poor, but on paper we are actually in a great position and there's a lot to be excited about.

There's a lot to like in this post. There is also Josh Maguire to add into the forwards (or have i missed something). A couple of things DP has to deal with and build within the squad is unity and belief.