It started the day Madge said he was leaving. Wane is likeable to Wigan fans because of his history but sadly he's a limited coach who's simply too obsessed with youth.

I fear he's a Brian Kidd i.e. the perfect number 2 but lacking something for the top job.

I think tonight has proved that Powell is the best English coach in the game.

For a Saints fan that's a pretty accurate summary!

Wigan remind me of Bradford and their decline. A coach cines in and revolutionises then, then the next coach who learned from him tries to emulate him without advancing with the game and gradually the team falls to bits.

I always though Wane was a poor choice of coach as he never seemed smart enough but I was happy to be proven wrong, I think now we are fully out of the Maguire influence and the team is suffering.


I don't like the Wigan mentality Wane has, it's too insular. We need the best team we can put in the field not a team full of local lads.

The game plan we are using this year is one that should be employed by a big side, Wane identified we need a big side........he recruits small players.

Players like Farrell are becoming our weakness croud favourites local lads on big money but not performing. I'd swap Farrell for Vea or Greenwood in a heartbeat.

Finally in my opinion the squad has no balance. Clearly Wane has opted for strength in depth rather than quality, and that is killing us.

Very very harsh and this eulogy of Maguire at the moment is becoming ridiculous. His second season ended in a damp squib even with a substantially improved squad. We lost twice on the bounce to saints in the play offs and at no time did we look like we had any inkling on how to change the game when we were very much second best. How many kids did he bring through????
Agree with your last sentence.

They're all happy to stay at Leeds for the love of the club. I don't buy it but maybe I'm a cynic. Like I say I feel there's a 'little extra' in the pay packet but you can afford it so why not.

So a DVD of magic doesn't prove the lads at Wigan are happy to play for Wane...fair enough. How do you proof lads leaving is down to him as you made out?

You can't and I can't but our squad certainly hasn't looked unhappy under Wane these past few years. If that's all been eroded in one off season then fair enough but I don't see it.

Yep and he's gone downhill since then as well, so your comment is justified.

Are we forgetting that Shaun Wane won the double less than 2 years ago? I know we were hammered tonight but lets not go overboard with such nonsense as he's 'limited' or 'the players don't want to play for him'. The first is simple conjecture and knee jerk reaction, the second is unfounded nonsense.

The same things people are criticizing in this thread are the same things Wigan's success has been built on the last 5 years or so; a good, talented crop of Wigan born and bred lads, with a couple others from overseas and other clubs sprinkled in.

We showed very limited glimpses tonight that Wigan can trouble teams when it clicks. It was the same against Hull KR, for the period before and after the break we were almost unplayable. We have a good, young team. A team capable to beat anyone on their day, a couple of bad results doesn't change that.

Don't forget we've got a new half back partnership this year and our inspirational captain is out for a month or so. Look at Saints tonight, they struggled against a poor Wakefield side [A side that was murdered by Widnes 5 days ago], albeit they won, but they haven't performed anywhere near their potential, and probably won't until they get their first choice 6 & 7 back.

I can honestly say I'm not worried. The last couple of performances remind me of the 3 or 4 games between the CC final and grand final in 2013. Go back and watch those games and see the lack of effort and disjointedness of the team. Something tells me we're holding back, because we're going to have to go full tilt between August and October. I might be wrong, but I'll wait and see how we front up against Leeds & Saints in the next month before I go into crisis mode.

I agree.

Fair summary for me ..... in addition to the player retention I also have the following reservations:

1) I'm afraid IL is far too conservative. I don't want to be too critical of IL, he has worked hard to drag this club up from the mess it was in. IMO he's a decent bloke at heart (the way he tried to help Hock, for example) but I think he needs to be more speculative. I remembering him saying (at a fans forum) we missed out on Michael Dobson by £25k per season to HKR - I just wonder how many more trophies (and the resultant cashflow/profits) we have missed out on by not spending that extra £25k? That being said and to be fair to IL he has also pulled off some cracking signings - George Carmont for example.

2) Its time to get to grips with our current approach to coaching. Like most fans I know, we agree that we appear to be becoming a team of louts. Its easy to play against Wigan - wind 'em up and Tomkins, Farrell, etc. will provide you with a ready stream of penalties. This reflects on the coach - if it's not our the coaches tactics then the coach has to drop the perpetrators - either way the coach is in charge of the situation. Wane needs to develop as a coach and quickly.

Oh well, better get my scarf out of the bin, find the season ticket I threw with it and be ready for next Friday.

MM team won the double two years ago.. but they had already slipped under Wane...

[list

Faz and Charnley.

He brought through what he needed and that's the way it should be. Both of the youngsters he signed improved the side.

It's laughable that you idolise Wane but have so little respect for arguably the best coach on the planet.

Players who played in the double finals who made their debut under SW:

Thornle
Green
Smith
Flower
Dudson
Taylor

Players who played in the double finals who made their debut prior to MM:

Tomkins
Goulding
Richards
McIllorum
Hansen
Mossop
O'Loughlin
Tuson

How you can say that was MM's team is beyond me, most of the players he signed; Deacon, Lima, Hoffman, Finch etc had all left at this point. What an odd comment to make.

We can't belittle Maguire, he was incredible for us and he's an amazing coach.

On the same hand lets not play down Wanes achievements! He has contended with far more then Madge ever had to and won things with teams with lower quality players in them. Madge raised our levels here to what they should have been based on the quality of squad we had but Wane has actually over achieved at times IMO.

He's far from perfect but I find it staggering he could be written off so soon.

For me its simple where we're going wrong and quite simple how we correct it

All we need to do is control our aggression and the ruck rather than the current reckless game plan we seem to be adopting.

Poor coaching has caused us to lose focus around the ruck area, and in our aggression. How many times over the past few weeks have we seen our players fly in, attempting the big hit, only to fail and either ricochet off another player, give away a cheap needless penalty, or help create a gap in our defence for the opposition to exploit?

This is leading our defence to be unstructured, us constantly scrambling in defence, players being out of position, and wasting energy so that when we get the ball we make silly errors!

Wane's 'beat em up', reckless aggression is not working, not least cause we're not actually big enough as a team to assert dominance! All we need to do is go back to basics!

Look at how souths controlled the game against st Helens, and you'll realise not too long ago we used to play like that. Problem is, we're not now controlling the ruck because we're attempting to be overly aggressive and constantly flying in on our defence.

Go back to the basics - strong 3 men tackles, wrestling to position the player and slow the PTB as we did under madge, will give the defence time to set its structure and stop us running around like a pub team, with no structure or plan, trying to put in the stupid one big hit which we somehow think will assert our dominance!

Do this, and we will win games! We have the talent, capability and skill but poor coaching is causing the problem at the moment!

Being reckless / creating mayhem and having a free reign (as per his much publicised speech) doesn't cut it and we simply need to be cleverer than this as teams are currently exploiting every weakness there ever was with this tactic! RL is a simple game - control the ruck and be clever with ball in hand.....we have the talent to do the latter, but our poor defensive strategy is leading to us not only giving ball away and leaking tries, but taking the juice out our plays when we need it!!!!