Quote: jonh "Phelps is average at best, i'm not saying Roberts is the ideal solution but he is here on a 4 year deal. If we are really wanting to make move forwards we must remove the deadwood and average players from the squad, so for me its bye bye Phelps. Great effort but simply not good enough, if we hope to be a top 3 club competing for silverware.'"
This is what I am trying to say. Ideally I'd get rid of Roberts but we can't.
Phelps may have made the full back spot his own but that isn't saying much at Wigan currently.
There is also the fact the none federation trained limit drops from 8 to 6 next year. I read on Mike's forum that means with IL saying he is after recruiting two players both Carmont and Phelps will have to leave to accommodate the new signings assuming Bailey and Smith going get us down to 6. These are the only none federation trained players out of contract so if we want to recruit two players all four have to go to keep us within the limit.
So it's a case of do we want to keep Phelps and not bring in a prop or half back from overseas (and that is what IL said he was doing)?
If we keep Phelps then this means looking to recruit from within the GB federation (how likely is that?) or sticking with what we have e.g. TL and Sam being the half backs or giving Coley a new deal.
So if we keep Phelps it compromises recruitment elsewhere so as I said you need to look beyond individual players and look at how you are to strengthen the team. Keeping Phelps reduces the flexibility to do that a great deal.
Dave
