If I live to 100 I will never see a worst performance from any professional team than the one I saw against London enough said

Now we've have played everyone once I decided to go all Phil Clarke and have a quick look at last seasons results against superleague sides (i left out the cup game v donny) compared to this season at very similar times of the year. The extra game last year is due to kicking off the season against Cas at Millenium Magic. As we haven't played Leeds in the league yet this year I included the cup game.

2011 - 13th May
Played - 14
Points for 246 - ave. 17.6
Points against - 397 ave. 28.4
30 points or more scored - 2
30 points or more conceded - 6

2012 - 6th May
Played - 13
Points for - 224 ave. 17.2
Points against - 376 ave. 28.9
30 points or more scored -3
30 points or more conceded -8

So going by the stats for all the extra investment in supposedly better quality players our points averages are marginally worse than last year up to press and despite not getting a tubbing yet (although if you take fridays missed kickes into it then thats a tubbing in my eyes) we have conceded 30+ more often. Of our own high scores this year we haven't got past 32 yet either. And just as last year we are down the bottom three of many of the key stats, meters made, clean breaks etc.

Now last year tailed off badly in the last third of the season, something that has affected us for the last two or three years. We have to hope that the reverse is true this year otherwise there will be a lot of disgruntled fans about.

Serious question, not just aimed at you.

I've seen a fair few people on here make reference to the 'fact' that we're spending significantly more on players this season than last; what is that opinion based on? I haven't seen it confirmed anywhere, apart from John Kear having the odd dig on Sky.

No I don't think we will, probably around 7 but I also don't think we'll get the spankings we got that year as well. I said at the start of the year that we'd finish 10th and I still reckon that's about right.

I've wondered the same as well.

James Elston has said that this year we are running with a 1.3 million salary cap, rising about 200k a year to the end of the franchise period. It was part of the application. I believe by the time we exited administration our cap was just under a million and didn't rise much through the course of the season.

Its not just the wages though but new extra investments things like team meals, improved training equipment & aids, improved player welfare through medical staff, massage & sports psychology etc. Overall the costs have increased by quite an amount and i'm not sure that the performances have followed suit.

Well at the moment 7 is a figure i pray for, i never really thought we do much better than 10th myself but up to now i feel a little let down with most of the performances.

Fingers crossed it improves.

But did he also say what the spend was in previous years?

He only mentioned that it was under a million for last year, seasons prior to that i'm not sure. I'm seem to remember a figure of 1.2m for those but could be wrong. The cull came when the financial difficulties came to light at the back end of the 2010 season.

I read somewhere that last years spend was between 700/800k.

If this season tails off in the last third like it did last season and worse still the previous season, I dread to think what some of our performances and results will be.