Warrington Wolves 21-man squad: Matty Ashton, Blake Austin, Rob Butler, Josh Charnley, Daryl Clark, Jason Clark, Mike Cooper, Ben Currie, Chris Hill, Jack Hughes, Toby King, Tom Lineham, Jake Mamo, Robbie Mulhern, Joe Philbin, Stefan Ratchford, Ellis Robson, Josh Thewlis, Danny Walker, Gareth Widdop, Connor Wrench.

Unchanged squad, does that mean more of the same ??

Mamo in for wrench but everything else the same I think

Won't be this but it should be:-

Matty Ashton
Tom Lineham
Toby King
Jake Mamo
Josh Charnley
Gareth Widdop
Blake Austin
Chris Hill
Daryl Clark
Mike Cooper
Ben Currie
Jack Hughes
Stef Ratchford

Jason Clark
Robbie Mulhern
Joe Philbin
Ellis Robson.

I think Price will go with the same team and same bench, otherwise he is admitting failure.

I think I would have dropped Wrench for this game and put him down for the CC tie. Philbin needs to go back to the bench where he can provide impact and Daz needs to start to cut down their forwards. He is by far and away our best tackler. Mamo in for Wrench and give Aston and Charnley half a game each on the wing, I don't think Charnley is match fit (or brain fit for that matter) atm.

Charlie I know what you are saying about admitting failure but the proof was in the pudding like performance of the whole team so no admission required it was obvious that it didn't work What was it that Albert Tatlock said about insanity?.

All the talk about Price being a conservative coach was total Boris as was his team selection against one of the stronger teams in the comp. To stick with the same line up only really works if its your strongest and there's an appetite for atonement. I didn't get that from that selection, performance or more disappointingly that attitude.

I agree with you about Wrench and perhaps some of the other lads re a run out in the CC it nearly worked last year in the league against better opposition.

Let's shake things up against Leigh before Inglis is available to take a back rotation out of the equation

I know you shouldn’t take the game in isolation, but Wrench wasn’t the problem at all at the weekend. If he was the best centre available last week, he did nothing to shift his standing.

Charnley had an absolute shocker. You could look over his previous form and afford him one bad game and pick him again, or you could use this as your example of how ruthless you are and drop him.

The problem is, there is an insistence not to play Ashton on the wing. Despite the upheaval of moving Rachford to centre and the centre to the wing like we did at the weekend. But Ratchford is our best available full back, so he shouldn’t be moved. So Price should pick the next best winger, Mamo. The problem with that is, he will have the Ashton problem all over again and have to find a way of getting him on, even if for the last 10 minutes again.

What Price should do, is pick a bench that he will use. Realistically, the three middle forwards need to be rotated, so we should have three middle forwards. Mulhearn and Clark did ok at the weekend, so they stay, the next best could be Butler. If he picks Davis, don’t pick Walker. Davis is the ‘stop gap’ for dummy half should Clark get injured. Without an injury, Walker gets 15 minutes and is a waste of a spot.

The fourth sub is the luxury position. If he’s gone with three big forwards (which I would), you can pick Walker or Ashton. It would be nice to give Clark a rest, or the option for some pace on the bench. But you can’t have two luxury picks when the pack isn’t dominant. The rotation of the three middle forwards is vital, that must be managed first, and having Davis and Jason Clark on at the same time just doesn’t give us enough grit up front. Both are lightweight and mobile, but neither will get you on the front foot.

With all that said, he will probably swap out Wrench for Mamo. Which is a cop out.

If you look at the selection omitting injured players it was essentially 1-17 squad numbers apart from Mamo who was swapped for Wrench, so I think the catastrophe was caused by;

Players collectively putting in a very bad performance.
Really poor use of the bench.
Bad tactics.

If you try to get inside Price's head I think he will believe that the problem is down to the players as he has essentially chosen his best 1st 17 and it will be 'up to them to put it right' against Leigh. If he admits to poor tactics ( Philbin / Clark on bench, Ashton virtually unused, no planned moves etc) then he might as well walk away from coaching.
Hence that's why I am guessing we will see the same or very similar team to last week.

I think that is a really good analysis of the situation. If we don't get an impact from the forwards, both defensively and in attack then everything falls apart. And as you say, that comes from the starting line up and carries on through the bench. So the bench has to be carefully chosen and appropriately used. With a decent bench prop in Mulhern, we should now be in a much better position to do all that. Unfortunately I think Price is looking to put fast mobile players onto the pitch when he thinks the opposition will be tired, hence keeping the two Clarke's on the bench. And I don't think that is a good tactic because as everyone on here has pointed out, Philbin is an impact prop and Clark should be on the field as he is one of our top 3 players. If we employ this against the Hull and Catalan packs we will be absolutely mullered and have lost the game by half time.

Price will believe that, pre-season, he has made the right choice in regard to playing Philbin at 13. He’ll also believe that it was the right thing to do to play Wrench ahead of Mamo at centre.

He and the players will be ashamed of their performance against Castleford. This week, having selected the same squad, Price will most likely go with the same 17 and give them a chance to ‘put things right’. No doubt we’ll see a big improvement in effort and one or two step changes in individual performances. Wrench, who barely played any competitive rugby in 2020, will have learned a lot, Charnley is unlikely to have two consecutive stinkers whilst Hughes and Cooper probably weren’t ready last week having missed the friendly. I expect that we’ll beat Leigh who, with the greatest respect, are likely to finish bottom of the table this season. But it won’t be convincing.

Even if we dominate the scoreboard we will still miss opportunities in attack and Leigh will likely expose some weaknesses in our defence. After the game we’ll hear about ‘a much better effort but still some way to go, clunky, early days etc’. We’ll beat Swinton the following weak no matter how many changes we make.

This is all papering over the cracks. Even when we tighten up our defence (an area where Price has succeeded) we have no attacking threat other than a kick to King. We don’t have a sword and shield, we have a shield and a butter knife.

Was watching the lads train at the stadium before, Mamo was training at right centre with Charnley outside him.
AND it might not mean anything but Lineham wasn't there and Ashton was training on the left wing outside of King.
I can't see Lineham being dropped and Charnley keeping his place if any winger was to be dropped so might not mean anything as a lot of the players weren't there, just what looks like the starting 13.

Lineham probably got lost on the way to the stadium.

Having thought about it after reading your post I think that you are (disappointingly) near the mark