My thoughts exactly. I think Lenegan has done enough to prove he knows what he's doing when it comes to recruiting playing and non-playing staff, can't say I'm worried that it hasn't been announced yet. To blame poor performances on the players being unsure about next years coach seems like a bit of a cop out for the players, they don't need any excuses and they should be focusing on the here and now imo, Madge is the current coach and at the moment that is what matters.

This!

Has Lenegan's recruitment been that good.

No denying that he got it right with Maguire but even that needed the agreement of the other Super League clubs as he didn't meet the necessary criteria so could have easily been rejected.

Elsewhere he recruited and EXTENDED Karl Pryce's contract - why does he no longer refer to Pryce as "a long term project"?

He claims that he does his background on players to ensure no bad eggs are signed but blows £130k on Martin Gleeson.

Tim Smith was a disaster, a big four year contract for Amos Roberts doesn't seem worthy of the trumpet blowing that Lenengan did about that "coup" at the time now does it?

Cameron Phelps was a waste of an import shirt unless you count the u20 trophy that himself and Palasena (isn't he another Lenegan contract extension to languish in the u20s at great expense) won a good return.

Deacon has missed an awful lot of game time but has been a useful player when there and no doubt helps with coaching so that could be desribed as good.

The recruitment of Hoffman, Finch and Lima were good signatures to secure but to be fair that was obviously down to Maguire's presence.

So beyond Maguire who and where is the rest of this recruitment to prove that he "knows what he is doing"?

It would be interesting to know how many of those players you mention where directly signed by the chairman or were signed on the coaches recommendation, I am guessing that the coach would have had a lot of input into those signings (most of whom were signed by under Noble anyway).

Even then Deacon despite his injury problems (he was only going to do one year to provide some experience then move to coaching - this year is an extra) and just about anyone will say that last year he was important. Phelps was a short notice signing brought in as cover and did ok. All clubs make good / bad signings - nature of the beast.

Off the field signings in the backroom staff have been perhaps the most important for the club - and there things have been good.

Throw in Richie Mathers into that and I would tend to agree that his recruitment has been patchy at best.

I believe he tried and tried and tried to recruit Chev Walker too

Lenaghan out. Bloody rubbish Wigan!

Dave Whelan is a deluded fool.

As for the Warriors coach. Is there any rush? We're only at the halfway point of the season. Maguire is in charge until this one ends - why rush to appoint his successor?

How many coaches has Whelan proclaimed to be the 'best in the world, best in Europe..etc'.

Paul Jewell, Steve Bruce, Martinez, Millward, Noble...

I suppose he'd argue that the proof is in the pudding. IL took Wigan to their first Grand Final victory in a decade. That wasn't a stroke of luck. And it's too easy to just dismiss the recruitment of Maguire as a one-off thing. That doesn't take into account how difficult it was to sign up a young Aussie coach with a big future, especially as so many folk - from Eddie and Stevo down to the doziest Wigan fan - were urging him to give Noble another contract. He rode a lot of rough water around that period, but thankfully had the strength of his convictions.

I also think that to deliberately ignore the good work he's done in securing us as much top junior talent as possible on good contracts - and not just from the Wigan area - is loading the dice a little.

Granted, that's the sort of thing a CEO should be doing, but in actual fact very few are and until IL took over, Wigan weren't either.

Gleeson, by the way, was a success. It may rankle in Warrington, but he was superb for us during our championship season, especially in the final. That was definitely money well spent.

I agree with you to an extent. When its been announced that a current coach is leaving at the end of the season, I think once you confirm his successor the existing coach loses a little bit of authority in the dressing room. Even if everybody says they are going to deal with it professionally, players can't help but start to switch mentally towards the new coach, will I be part of his plans etc.

The case where it is a serious issue is recruitment and retaining players but that's not so much a problem when your key players are all on contract anyway. 10 years ago it bit Warrington on the backside badly when we delayed over replacing Darryl Van de Velde, Darryl had signed most of the squad to contracts that expired in 2001 along with his own, so that if he left it gave a new coach flexibility to choose who he wanted to stay - makes sense from Darryl that. The problem was when Darryl announced that he was leaving to go home, a number of our better players were in the position where they needed to decide on their future (Nutley, Kohe-Love, Hunte) plus others like Langer, Nikau were leaving anyway. I remember Doug Hoyle saying we were going to make an appointment who the fans would be very happy indeed with, and we were supposed to be getting Neil Kelly who had done well with Widnes, then Widnes won the NFP Grand Final and he signed a new contract with them. So we had this big rigmarole with various names in the frame, Shaun Edwards was supposedly interviewed but he didn't want to relocate from London and we wanted him to live locally, then Billy McGinty, John Monie were linked with the job and in the end we jumped for Steve Anderson and David Plange, by which time most of our squad had signed deals elsewhere and we ended up behind the game for recruitment in 2002 and had a crap squad that nearly got relegated.

Do we even know that the deal hasn't been done and the players and staff already know.

If it is Wane and Scully, what better time and place to announce it than Friday night - just to get the Saints fans mad?!! Wane, Scully and IL would make a great pre or post match interview for Sky!

Or are they saving the announcement till the Big one!

You're right, IL's recruitment has been less than perfect. But we are SL Champions, so he must be doing something right!

Waney's just got a brand new Merc according to form, so he can't be doing that badly. Think the contract IL wants for Wane is incentive based. A small rise in basic pay but huge bonuses based on results. Seems like good business practise to me. If Waney wins the grand final in his first season like madge did, then he'll be able to write his own ticket. If he doesn't come upto scratch and has to drop back to being a number 2, then nothings lost.