Never can as innocent a comment as "I want to win every game" have undergone as much pointless analysis.

Seriously, would anyone expect a professional sports coach to say anything else?

More to the point, do people really think that's the whole story?

Do Wigan have no other plans, no other strategies other than going all-out to win every match - simply because Shaun Wane didn't elaborate on them in a newspaper interview, which has probably been trimmed, edited for length etc by the subs?

Some people should just get real.

agree. lack of ball control and kicking game did. as did sinfield who turned in one of the best 40 mins ive seen in a long time.

Correct. Kn0bbing about with fancy plays when leading by a point with 3 mins to go being the final straw.

If it was just that comment there wouldn't be an issue.

It's the actions that suggested the comment was to be taken literally that are the issue.

So which of last season's matches do you think he should have tactically lost?

The Saints game at the end of the regular season, and the first play off against Les Catalans wouldn't have been bad games to lose. Having said that I think the point is that he should have rotated the squad and not pushed the lads as hard as he did, which may have resulted in a couple more losses, rather than him tactically losing specific games.

We did lose that Saints game - so clearly that didn't help us much. And it's difficult to see how losing to the Cats first round would have helped us, given that it was an easy romp which wasn't likely to tire anyone.

But that aside, I'm actually astounded to learn that anyone thinks a professional sports team should go out INTENDING to under-perform to such an extent that there is a good chance they'll lose, and can only shudder to imagine the calumny that certain posters on here would heap on Shaun Wane's head if he was ever foolish enough to admit that this had been his plan.

As a fan and former player of many years, I have never known a situation where losing matches, or dicing with defeat by turning out a non-competitive team, helped you. You can be more knackered after a heavy beating than you can after an easy win. Defeat is bad for morale as well, and can become a habit.

Great coaches like Graham Lowe and John Monie never believed in wrapping their best players in cotton wool to preserve them for big matches. That Wigan side would compete just as hard the week before Wembley as it did at the start of the season.

But that is a completely different point. Monie and Lowe did not have to contend with the current playoff system. They also didn't have the hamstring that is the Communist Cap, meaning that your best players may well need to be rotated as the "cover" is of a much lower quality.

It's not about deliberately setting out to "under perform" or "lose" games [iper se[/i, it's about realising that the ABSOLUTE AIM in the season is to get the team firing on all cylinders come September. Now of course that means finishing in the top "x" but given the state of SL that should be a given for the top 4 teams.

Okay ... so we're not going to deliberately under-perform mid-season, we're not going to deliberately lose matches mid-season, we're just going to sit our best players on the bench mid-season.

And that doesn't amount to much the same thing?

Well we have tried doing it by 'winning all the matches'.................and that doesn't work.

Wane probably only knows the win every game mentality, and that is, or was, usually fine.

So what is the endgame now ?

The answer nowadays is to win at OT.

So therefore to plan that, is to do what Leeds have been doing ?

Lose 50% of all the seasons games like Leeds have done ?

Shocking.

Not true - our performances in the end of season Premiership under both Lowe and Monie were poor during the record Wembley run, other than the 92 team which could play in its sleep.

No it quite obviously does not.

So just out of interest, which of our best players would have you sat on the bench last season, bearing in mind that Pat Richards and Tommy Leuluai were already sat there for big chunks of it? Or had you forgotten about that?

Shaun Wane got lambasted on here for deliberately turning out a weak team at Widnes. I can just imagine the reaction of a fan like you, if he threw away more points by doing the same thing again.

Leeds won 5 more in SL than they lost, get over it. Or probably around 15 more if you count all the other competitions they competed in.

A great season of achievement, who could possibly disagree with them being crowned champions!!!