Fielden looks to have lost about 2 stone of muscle since he left bradford. combine this with lack of form and you have a prop who makes no impact at all. with regard to noble, he will not be sacked imo. we will beat celtic on sunday and the usual tripe will be spouted ' our season starts here' 'we are showing improvement' 'we need to show patience '. this season is already a wash out and that will be confirmed when wakefield knock us out of the cup next month. noble will go at the end of the year when his contract is up, not b4.

So according to you there is no issue with what fielden does in technique?

Noble is far from doing things right at the moment, therefore he might not be dealing with Fieldens ball carrying.

Bottom line is i think if he got his head down and ran he would get go forward rather than what he is doing at the moment

i have just had a look at fieldens stats over the past six years. he has been suprisingly consistant. his carries per game has dropped slightly this season but his tackles per game his increased. his meters per carry has only dropped slightly (about 6 meters per game). Although his recent performance doesn't seem to relect these stats, these are facts and i think we should get off his back.

Regardless of what the stats say, is he playing to an acceptable level?

No he isn't which leads to the next question. Is the problem fixable?

I think certainly to a degree it is.

Your looking at those stats wrong. I bet if you looked at Peacocks stats over those same 6 seasons he has improved on each year (as a general rule), this is what most forwards will have been doing (like Graham) and slowly, because Fielden has just stagnated on the same level of performances everyone else has caught him up and eventually over took him due to improvement. Therefore what was a world class level of performance is now just average compared to the best out there.

Fielden has been using the same technique ever since he arrived, so Noble's had plenty of time to change it, if he thinks there's a problem. No matter what we think, the fact that Noble hasn't seen fit to change it suggests he thinks Fielden's halfar$ed attempts at carrying the ball are acceptable...

I agree with this, he is never goignt o be the player he was but he can be coached i think to be of more use to the team, i cannot understand why Noble cannot see it.

His running style is all wrong given his lack of ability to go through a man as he used to. He has lost some of his physical prowess and now rather than looking to break the defensive line he needs to concentrate on finding his front and quickly.

He runs in so upright it is easy for any defence to get under his ribs keep him upright and push him back turtling him and totally slowing the play the ball down.

Were I Brian Noble i would have him running with his centre of gravity forward rather than directly over his base and give him one instruction, on cantact find your front which is far easier running with a forward centre of gravity. It is no longer about busting tackles for Fielden or even making huge yards, it is about getting to the deck and back up as fast as possible, THATS IT. He may not contribute with big yards but this would certainly put us on the front foot unlike the drives he produces at the moment. Sadly i think both of them have been together too long and are too happy blowing smoke up each others backsides to face the facts.

You sure?

I cannot see footage at the moment of when he arrived. All I know is that what he does at the moment has no go forward

I've got to agree.

Don't forget about 'bending our backs'.

Agree again. I seem to be agreeing with everybody! Well, almost.
The trouble is he cost £450k so we have high expectations.
It's like O'Loughlin. Top tackler in the league but gets most stick.