Easter is deadline day for me. Everyone said there were no excuses for Lam coming in to this season and he’s had a pretty horrendous start in terms of improvement from last year.

A coach is there to lead the way and bring the best out of his players. He’s responsible for making them better players and ultimately for results. All he got last year was a few scrappy results but in terms of players improving or playing their best rugby, it was non existent pretty much (Sam Powell maybe).

Say we brought in the new Justin Holbrook/Michael Maguire and I made a list of players I think could offer up more than they’ve done under Lam and honestly I think it would be 20 strong.

Agree with the comments about this squad's capabilities. It pretty clear we have the ability to walk all 3 trophies this season. Not saying we should or will but we could and are well capable but just keep under performing. Joe Greenwood was superb for Wane and was a major force in our GF success and now all of a sudden he is garbage etc. That back line is ridiculous when fit

1. French
2. Manfredi
3. Hardaker
4. Gildart
5. Marshall
6. Hastings
7. Smith/Tommy

That is a very skillful back line and half. We should be tearing sides apart but............................ You can't do that if your props aren't cutting the mustard. The problem lies up top. We need big metres and big carries and some senior players to step up. The raging Bullock is prime for this but if the rumours are true then he needs to sort his lax and billy big balls attitude out. Not a fan of Flower but he can come back in for me too and not seen Clark yet so cant comment.

IL took the easy and probably cheap option on Lam. He’s on a rolling contract and you aren’t going to get a top coach coming on those sort of terms. You’d also struggle to get one if the coach has as little say in signings and back room staff as we are led to believe in my opinion.

So,if Lam does get the boot sooner rather than later, it would not surprise me at all to see the job given to Lockers.

The club have known about the forwards not cutting the mustard for a few years but still continue to reward under performing players with contract extensions, starting positions and low minutes on the field.

If we had a pack that could make 50-60 metres a set we'd be laughing with that backline.

Agreed. There is no balance to our squad at all. All of the talent is in the backs, barring Lockers and Farrell. Hastings doesn’t turn into an average half overnight, he just had the platform to play at Salford that we can’t/won’t give him (and French).

Correct, the quality of players from outside the club has gone down since the time of Madge being the Coach

Even the website is out of date. We are now into the season and still we do not know who is playing in the Under 18 and 16 Academy and Womens teams.

Hardly surprising that sale of season tickets has not been very good!

I've got no complaints about Hastings. I think he's shown enough to demonstrate his quality, but he's on a hiding to nothing unless we beef up the pack.

Playing Smith or Shorrocks could have been an option, not both. On a small pitch we should have gone big, had at least Clarke involved, pushed Havard into the second row and maybe brought in Bullock/Kilner.

Either way, we are peeing into the wind until we get a new coach. I had a chat with my Widnes supporting mate before the season, he’d backed Wigan for the Grand Final, I said no chance because we have a good squad, we will finish top 3 but we won’t win a big game because we don’t have the coach.

In all seriousness I think I’d rather give Matty Peet the job. In fact I’d be putting the feelers out now for Jason Demetriou.

Although Smithies and Partington are decent players, the problem with both of them is they struggle to make metres, so them constantly playing together is hindering our go forward a lot and especially when you’ve got 10 minute Tony in the same team, Clark and Bullock in for Partington and Clubb next week imo

Whilst I don’t watch Wigan regularly (bar TV games), I did notice that Wigan seemed to have no set plays or patterns of play. You’ve got the likes of French and Hastings, and not once did they offer the threat of a set play together. I can’t remember seeing Hastings trying to find French once in the entire 80 minutes.
I’m just not sure what Wigan do in training, if there isn’t any evidence of combinations or pre-planned moves on game-day. That comes down to coaching.

That's one very expensive hobby.

In two weeks we play HullFC at home. For that Lam has to put out a big and experienced pack, anything less and we'll lose.

The best way to attempt a win surely is to play the big forwards v Toronto so they'll be more familiar than throwing out a never tried before team and squad v Hull.

G Burgess (if fit), Bullock, Flower, Byrne maybe Clarke should be props, Greenwood and Farrell back row with Lockers at 13.
Go with Smith at scrum half as we'll need his good kicking game and Hastings at 6.
Backs select themselves until Manfredi and Gildart are fit.

After the Cas selection shambles Lam needs to get his head around the fact that when it comes to RL forwards size matters. If he doesn't learn that soon it may be too late.

I noticed that time after time when we went to our right flank French would be coming round the back of our line but every time it went to Isa,we need to be missing Isa out and creating a 3 on 2 or is that wishful thinking

We spend a boat load of money on Hastings, also sign the player he formed a partnership with last season in Bibby and then split them to accommodate a young player. No. If we are to play another halfback with Hastings then they have to make way, not Hastings.

Having Bibby and Hastings together is more solid defensively because they trust each other, whereas Bibby was coming across Smith as Smith isn’t as good in defence as Hastings and Bibby was coming in trying to defend for him, we can’t have that, teams will just try and have their second rowers run all over Smith so that Bibby starts coming across then after a few times ping the ball out wide.