I'd rather spend less on players and more on a proven top quality coach if that's the only way we could afford it. I don't believe it is for the record though. In a sport controlled by a salary cap the biggest difference can be made by spending on the coaching set up and yet we gave the job to an ex-player with less than 2 seasons experience as an assistant coach. Ridiculous decision.

Exactly! How teams play at any club is down to the coach, he is the one who is responsible for success or failure. The coach/manager will take the team to the level of his ability. To prove this theory take the classic example at Man Utd. Ferguson winning everything possible like he did at his previous clubs and making sure they were a top club every season, never out of the top 3 in the league and qualifiers for the Champions League every year. He leaves and the club employ a coach (Moyes) who year after year only manages to achieve mid table positions and never qualify for the Champions League. Guess what? United suddenly become a mid table side and don't qualify for the Champions League.
Now, we have sacked a coach (Gentle) who got us in the top 6 the both seasons he managed us (and a cup final) and replaced him with a coach from an amateur league, if my theory is correct we should now be bottom of the league and heading for the amateur leagues! Having watched us lately and looked at the Super league table and stats could anyone argue that we would look out of place in those leagues??
Some say it was time for Peter to go after the Cup and Huddersfield fiasco BUT it was leaked to him that Pearson was going to sack him 2 weeks before Wembley by some of the players and thats why the team played badly during those 2 games. I know this because he was lodging at my mates house in Swanland and believe me he got a raw deal and was extremely upset with Pearson. So yea the buck stops with Pearson.

If I won the Euromillions for sure. But not to make a return, to try and buy success. The end of franchising IMO makes it a much less attractive investment also as it makes planning for the future far less certain. And dealing with the SMC on the stadium would be a big negative for an investor as signals must be that we're at risk of being evicted.

I agree completely with Robbo4 that in a salary cap era the coach is the biggest potential differentiator. I wrote to James Rule on exactly this point re Agar and he told me it was nonsense. With unlimited funds this would be my priority, from a cultural as well as technical perspective.

My original post was just me sounding off how I felt and I knew I was not alone with those thoughts. AP can stick to his guns and carry on with the present regime, thats his choice its his money. There are seven of us sit in the South together and we have all decided over the weekend enough is enough, both my boys have been passholders for over twenty years I have bought one this year because I can attend more games. We have all decided that next season we will not buy season passes, but pick and choose matches, thats our choice its our money.

Changing a coach now will have no effect on the decisions, we do not trust the present regime to press forward to a better team, structure and most of all watching pleasure. I know the club may suffer as a result because I know thousands will walk away, sorry for that I have been there through the bad times and stuck by the club. This is self inflicted, we should be at least competing and I for one no longer believe the IAKOW mantra the club preaches to us.

We are not special and no different to any other sports supporter

I was going to re-new my 2 west stand passes next week via the 12 month direct debit...but Friday was the final straw for me,I don't expect us to win every week,but I do expect to have some level of entertainment!
Will also choose my games next year unless we have coach who has a clue...or one who can string a sentence together would be a start....

If pearson were running out of cash he wouldn't have funded the sneyd transfer fee, the paying off of the likes of arundel or the move to the new training facilities

I suspect he is banking on the first tranche of cash from the new Sky deal which is due in September, but that depends on us still being in Super League.

The fee was paid 6 months ago IIRC, gates are down. Employees leaving are not being replaced. Doesn't quite indicate the club's awash with cash to pay off the current coaching staff and upgrade them all in quality and number. IMO.

Many, possibly all of those players who have been paid off, e.g. Arundel, McDonnell, Miller, will be getting their money by instalments rather than a lump sum.

Even if Pearson was brassic (which I'm sure he isn't) he could always give his mate Peter Wilkinson a call. Recently named 9th richest person in Yorkshire at £360m.

It's one thing wasting your own money on things you find you knew nothing about but wasting someone else's?

It doesn't mean anything really. pearson may think he has things covered with the staff he has

Right, I didn’t reply when I first saw your response because this may include a bit of a rant.

I’m not surprised you’re not sure about either option, neither is appealing. However the scenario given was one of no more money to spend, and the question asked was what options would be available to Pearson in that scenario. If there is no money available to affect change, then the only 2 alternatives are to cut costs (either just to save money, or to reapportion elsewhere), or to cut his losses by selling up and moving on. Neither is pleasant, but it really is as simple as being only those 2 choices. No more money to spend = cut/redistribute spending or sell up/close down. The only possibly third option is to keep things exactly as they are, but with the dwindling crowd factor that is not within Pearson/the club’s control.

On scaling back the squad, players like Lineham and Shaul are not where I’d be looking. Those two should not be amongst our highest earners or significantly more expensive than alternatives. More sensible would be to look at the likes of Sneyd, Pryce, Ellis, Minichiello, and Westerman. All will probably be good earners, and in all honesty only Ellis really comes close to consistently offering us likely value for money compared to what we probably could get to do the same jobs. It’s almost laughable that the big criticism of Gentle was the over-expensive recruitment of overpaid players, yet 3 of those are Radford signings and a 4th was given a long-term contract by him and they probably epitomise the very same problem. We’re forking out money that is arguably unnecessary and almost definitely not delivering it’s value.

This isn’t to say I don’t think any of them are any good. In fact I think they are 5 of our most able players. The issue is that the system/style we play does not significantly benefit from spending so much money on them. The 3 forwards are just used as battering rams. They give everything to do it, but if all we want is big lumps to cart the ball up, we don’t need to be spending international-level money to do it. As for halfbacks, we needn’t (arguably don’t) bother. I really don’t know how many we need to get through before people will finally stop blaming recruitment and the individual players and realise that we play such a dour brand of non-rugby that it actually makes it harder for halfbacks to play. Our ptb is appallingly slow, so they have barely any time and space to work in. Our option runners are practically non-existent, so they are left with choices of a simple and predictable pass to the next man in the line, take on the line solo and most likely get cleaned out, or hoof it. If all we’re going to use a halfback for is as an extra pair of hands in the line and then an up & under to the corner on the last, we could save a lot of money by just picking up a pair from the Championship, like Cas did with Finn, or we actually did with Ellis, but have since seen Cas and Hudds harness better than we could.

Obviously I'm not claiming to know what our players earn, but I think it's a sensible guess that those are 5 of our (if not the exact 5) top earners. Houghton will be the other contender, but as much as he is derided on here, with the current defence-first attitude of our team he's a key figure.

As for selling the club, you will nearly always find a buyer for something, you just might not like how much they’re offering. Your example of before Pearson bought us supports that. The club was up for sale, and there were rumours of the kind of figure Kath Hetherington was demanding when people enquired. IIRC, those demands were dropped because of the tax bills on their way to SL clubs over the image rights/overseas payments, and Pearson moved in when the price was lowered. I’m pretty sure he said as much when he bought the club and talked about the first year losses that could be expected due to those tax payments.

You most likely won’t hear whispers of potential buyers if the club isn’t up for sale. Nobody will buy it at a premium price, but vultures will show interest if/when Pearson actively wants rid because they’ll then have a position to negotiate.

Absolutely spot on. It's like spending a fortune on a Ferrari and giving Maureen Rees £20 to race it for you. Better to buy a Ford Focus and get Ken Block behind the wheel.