For me, you've got to Whiting on the bench

So finishing in the top 8 of a 12 team league is going to be classed as some form of success.Just shows how low our standards have slipped

Who said 8th would be a form of success?

Most supporters would consider that as a reasonable improvement on last season. We are unlikely to jump from 11th to the top six, never mind the top four. The fact is that after the poor youth policy of Agar and patchy recruitment by Gentle and McRae we are some way behind Wigan, Saints, Warrington, Catalans, Leeds and Huddersfield which leaves us battling with the others for two places in the top eight.

I think realism has finally caught up with us. Our expectations have been about 8 years out of date. As fans I get the impression our expectations have still been based, at least in part, on 2004-2007 when we actually were decent and regurlarly beat the top sides.
The realisation that we're not that good and we have a lot of work ahead to reach those heights again has hit.
Thats not to say I don't have optimism for the coming years, I do.

Scrapping to make the 8 is the best we can hope for .
Making the top 6 would be brilliant.
Sneyd is a massive gamble to shell out £100k for. He struggled the back end of 2014 when the pressure was on . Pryce is in the twilight of his career. Yet again a new halfback partnership looms! Will they deliver the goods?
One positive is the emergence of some of the young guns.
Maybe patience is the key for 2015?

Its not that finishing in the top 8 is necessarily a form of success in itself, just that missing out on it is a something of a disaster to say the least.