The rumour seems to be that Wane will take on much of the rugby decisions Rads currently makes or at least he’ll have a big input in to it. The retention/release of players and the signings brought in needs an overhaul, no doubt about it but I always hold back from going in too harshly on Rads. He can only work with the budget he’s given and decisions these past 12-18 months or so seem to be based as much on cost savings, as they do on the quality players will bring.

He 100% wants to be the best club in the world. He's a Wigan fan first and foremost.

What he won't do is break the salary cap and pay for players that don't want to be here.

The guy has put at least £5m of his own money (the current debt, all to him) into making sure the club pays up to the cap (over it technically with subsidies for marquee etc) and is competitive including bankrolling the club to the tune of £2.5m during a pandemic. All this why his own fans cba to go to games and claim that he's cheap.

Some decisions around players haven't worked out as we'd hope, but his main mistake has been keeping Lam for 3 years. Prior to that we were the SL Champions.

He also wants the best for the sport. Some of what he says is controversial and upsets a few people but it's usually the clubs who cba doing anything other than collecting the sky money every year, which is going down because RL fans cba watching RL so sky put more money elsewhere like the NFL for example.

I wanna be really clear here - I'm not bashing IL. I like plenty of the stuff he's done and he's been a great owner. I'm also not calling him cheap either - how anyone can look at Robin Park and say that is beyond me.

For me tho until he does break the cap, or at least calls out the BS around it - he's not trying to make the club the absolute best version that it can be. He's playing to rules that, let's face it, are designed to work against Wigan. I'm not talking about fantasy signings here either. I'm talking about being able to retain every talent we want & sign experienced guys to balance it out.

At the min, he's spending money on youth scouting, development & facilities knowing that, ultimately, other clubs will get the benefit of it. That's wrong and not good for Wigan.

Like I said in my OP, why should we have to chose between giving KPP a raise and missing out on a quality player for the here and now too? It almost feels like that, at the min, we know we've got a good crop of lads but they aren't fully ready for a couple of years. We don't want to get rid of them, because like I said they are good lads, but we also can't afford loads of alternatives because we're paying to keep a future team together.

Wire would win it every year if they scrap the cap

I'd hate it too.

Is that better than what we have now tho?

Then surely the logic of what you saying, sarge, points to a smaller SL? Less clubs to share the player pool means better standards, right?

But good luck to Lenegan (or anyone else) getting that past the SL chairmen.