i agree defence is a worry and we can now see why Dwyer was released by Leeds.No doubting his attacking flair but defence is shocking and once a player is through that gap its normally try time.
My other concern is about the lack of aggression in our play whether its running with the ball or defending.Our forwards in particular need to show much more aggression when carrying the ball and making a tackle.Smith has already remarked about our poor tackling technique allowing too many offloads so its a major area we need to improve.
Expect to see several changes for Salford.
Houghton definitely will be back

In Smiths post game comments after the Cats game that’s one of the things he spoke about in regards the tackling efforts/techniques [i“It’s really hard to get a foothold, particularly when you’re making as many errors as we were and then poor defence and defensive reads/contacts. Our hit and stick was way off there tonight. Not only did it mean an attempt at tackle, it meant two or three attempts of a tackle in one play and that hurt us”[/i.
The positive is we have an experienced Coach who has been there, seen it and done and won’t accept that from the players and will let them know.
We all know this season is about making the necessary changes to the fabric of the team rather than mounting any sort of challenge. I can see a raft of comings and going’s before the 2024 season starts.

He said a few months ago in a radio interview he's not the coach that has a pop at the players

So he won't do that

But he should cause although we're 2 from 3 we wasn't far off losing all 3

And playing likes of mcintosh and lane despite been terrible is a bit of concern

Yet he acknowledged he’d said a few things to the players at half time against Cas which he said possibly took some of the wind out their sails. I doubt he isn’t going to address things with the players and hearing from players who’ve played under him have all said although he likes to have fun he tells it as it is.

As for playing Lane & McIntosh who would you suggest he put in instead when already missing the likes of Savelio, Sao, Carlos and injuries to some of the fringe players along with Mitch still recovering. So no real surprise that they’ve stayed in the 17

4th worst defence in the league currently (behind Wakey, cas and Leeds) hopefully smith sorts it out soon!

Late to the party, so apologies if its been mentioned, but I have always had my reservations about doing Catalans in a day. Early start, plenty of travel, a hard game to prepare for physically and mentally, and to then catch them on a day when they are red hot, it is always going to be a difficult ask.

Hard to judge a game by just listening on radio, but it sounds that they simply never got going. It's probably the grounding reality check we needed, and hopefully, in the long run, the game we look back later in the year and think 'yeah okay, we learned a lot from that game'.

Saturday is a big game now, both performance and result wise. Savelio has to come in for Lane for me, I think he has been poor, particularly in defence for nearly a year now. I actually think Scott has done well in the first three games, but if Carlos is back to full fitness i think we need him in to protect Mcintosh, otherwise that right edge will just become an easy target to teams. If mitchy is back id have him on the wing, a bigger and stronger right edge all round.