This is what concerns me most about Pearson. He seems completely out of step with lot of fan opinion.

Just a couple of things I wanted to pull out of a very good post.

Firstly, the 'merger' I reckon has had the biggest effect on the current attitude towards the club.

On the Wigan point, we never saw anyone saying this when we lost 13-12 at their place earlier in the year. Last Friday's result, to me, was more one of 'we've done what we set out to do in making the 8'.

it's worse than that, he discourages people telling him, some people you would think he has a debt of gratitude to!

Must admit, Pearson certainly doesn't like being told he may be wrong.

The burning question is "Can fans stomach another season with Radford at the helm?"

To me.. Fans have lost confidence in Radford... Personally I cant see Radford steering us any higher, I feel he's taken us as far as he can...

On your last point Ellis, Feka and Pryce played in that game. Two of our biggest forwards and a big back. I totally agree we were under strength the other night and that had a lot to do with the final result and indeed how we were steamrollered. Not a particularly good advertisement for the strength of our squad as a whole though.

For me, watching pro sport is an aspirational thing. I want to watch a game played in a way your average Joes on the local park can't, with skill and speed and a bit of natural ability I can marvel at. Brute force and grinding it out don't really interest me. As you say, personal preference.

If you write off last year as a clear out/transition year, then I think it's very hard to say we've seen a lot of improvement from the 2013 team to the 2015 one. And I'm personally less confident that we're making progress at the moment, I think we're stagnating with the odd breakout or gutsy performance.

The only season that happened was the 2010 one, and it probably accounts for the increase of 19 followed by a more noticeable drop off. Otherwise it would have probably been a smoother decline.

Don't get this. If we finished 6th (very doable) does Radford not deserve another year? I'm pretty sure he'll get one on the basis of making the 8 this year, but surely it's a year of improvement?

There certainly are. But it doesn't suggest that people were attending mainly because we were winning.

Sorry, didn't mean completely forget 2014. Just meant that it was obviously a strip back of the dead wood and complete rebuild starting this year. Improvements are being made IMO.

As well as Wigan being missing Crosby and Flower that night, 2 of their bigger players, and Sarginson instead of Bateman in the centres.

I don't think it's right to accept that we are now improving based upon it being better than a year that should be considered a write off. Setting the bar lower with a seriously poor year should not be able to be used as a new baseline to measure whether things are getting better when we're arguably not even yet back to the standard prior to that.

indeed.

There's not much difference at all between where we are now and where we were in 2013 in my view. Virtually none. Last year was a poor year. Arguably we're over that but only back to where we were.