+1

Welcome to Wanes world..... see what I did there?

Excellent

In Isas defence, Hankinson was far too deep when attacking the Saints line, if he’d have been in the right position he may have caught it. Unfortunately Hankinson had read the ‘1983 Rothmans Woodbines guide to Wing Play’ prior to kick off and was too deep.

And this further illustrates my point about our current situation not being down to coaching. Hankinson is a centre, Isa is a 2nd row. Both out of position and bombed an excellent chance that was created. Had the chance been on the other side I’d argue the ball wouldn't have ended up in touch and we’d likely have scored but we’ll never know.

It's not just the Saints game though is it really. So far this season we've literally had one 80min performance all season. The all other games there's been major issues, hence our league position. In spells we've looked promising, but to go from defending champs on an unbeaten run to rock bottom?
I've not seem great attacking flair or anything particularly different from last season, I have however seen us look clueless in pretty much every game for spells and develop paper light defence, which is most alarming considering we were known for strong D under Wane.

I'm not writing Lam off. You make some valid points regarding missing players etc. I hope he can turn it round. But in. all honesty I can't say I've seen enough to want the club to keep Lam on. Not yet at least.

I think that's fair. We were starting to see the beginning of a proper partnership between Sammut and Williams, but that has been put on hold now like so many others things, The weak D remains a real concern, though; it looks a greater malaise than can be explained just by missing players.

I loved Lam as a player, but as a coach I suspect he's bitten off a lot more than he can chew. He may well have come to Wigan thinking he could do 'a Michael Maguire' and make his reputation by turning a team of underachievers into champions in the space of one season.

But as I see it, there are two main problems with that.

1. Michael Maguire clearly inherited a bunch of players who were much better than anyone realised - it was just that Brian Noble wasn't much of a coach. In comparison, Lam's team is woefully short on quality. It's suffered more injuries too, but it contains far too many old soldiers.

2. More importantly, Adrian Lam is clearly not Michael Maguire. Instead of working on the areas where we were weak, he tried to affect a massive change in the team's playing style overnight, and it's just not worked. Yes, we regularly throw the ball wide to the cavalry (and sometimes we score glorious tries from that), but he appears to have almost completely neglected our infanty. Teams now go through our middle as if it's not even there. There's no rocket-science required to understand Wigan's defeats. It's all in the defence, or lack of it. It's also the case that Lammy himself looks nervous and shaky before games, whereas Maguire was ice-cool. That is bound to infect the players, and it's only going to get worse as the losses build up.

I wouldn't deny that we've had a bad run of injuries, but we shouldn't let that disguise the real problem, which is - and I hate saying this - that Adrian Lam is out of his depth. A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that, once we had the Shaun Edwards monkey off our back (he also carries a lot of the blame!), we should offer Lam the job long-term on the condition that he turns it around by mid-season. Well now I'm not sure we can afford to wait that long. In constantly finding reasons why it's not Lammy's fault, I fear that we are wasting valuable time. The relegation clock is ticking.

If we lose at home to London a week Thursday it's time to panic, until then, deep breaths everyone.

I feel a bit sorry for Lam, a mixture of recent injuries and years of poor recruitment have made it difficult for him to find his feet at Wigan. Given both of those things, it's almost impossible for him to do what he was recruited to do - to change us into a team who play an attacking/entertaining style of rugby that will stop attendances falling year after year.

Having said that, the second point above about our defence puts a big question mark over his coaching abilities. These lads could tackle last year especially in the middle of the park and that seems to have gone. Bilko posted some scary stats on twitter about metres gained down the middle by our opposition over the last three games. If Lam can't fix that, we're always going to be under the cosh for the field position, and even if we've built up a decent lead, as we did against Cas, other teams know we've got a soft underbelly and they can rack up points if they get a roll on.

Although a few weeks ago I wasn’t on the Lam Out bandwagon I can’t help but agree with this post. I do feel sorry for him in that he inherited a squad fraught with issues and injuries but I can’t really see a future at Wigan for him.

Tony Smith is being rumoured and to be honest I think that would be quite a shrewd appointment. He’s a proven quality coach and proven winner, but much more importantly he’s proven to improve teams exponentially. Warrington wouldn’t be where they are today without Tony Smith.

I would hope we go nowhere near Tony Smith, he had his time but the game has moved on from his tactics. Anybody remember his last year at Wire? No thanks.

Tough to judge Lam at all IMO because of the disruption in many areas. We’ve had injuries, suspensions, a shambles of a coaching situation, a drugs ban and two players on drink drive charges. As a caretaker you sort of feel some of that stuff is beyond his control and tough to get a grip on.

There’s some positive signs but as many negative ones and I still don’t feel like I can form any reasonable judgement on how he’s done or could do longer term. There’s also too many unknowns in regards to recruitment and retention beyond this year to know what a coach will have to work with. We’ll need serious recruitment to get back near the top of the league regardless of who the coach is.

Agree with all the points re: injuries etc but some stuff (defending from dummy half/up the middle/discipline) is basic, no matter who the player is, and not having that is very very worrying.

Pretty much sums the situation up really,the situation of course isn’t down to Lam but is he really the man to push on and if needs be stand up for what players he does want?

Time will tell of course.