Regarding penalties, it's a bit of a lottery and I think all teams are partly to blame for the lottery it's become.
All this messing about at the ptb, the walking forward into the defender, getting the arm "trapped" by the tackler etc, it's made it impossible for refs to distinguish the genuine from the play acting to an extent. If everyone cut it out then I think you know what you were going to get a bit more.

Keeping hold the ball is a basic skill and no player drops it deliberately but our ball retention this season is poor and not good enough. We are also giving away far too many stupid and needless penalties which are costing us the one Danny Houghton himself gave away on the last a typical example.
We are simply not learning or adapting and if the plan A doesn't seem to be working we are totally void of any other ideas.

Yet Danny Houghton was one of our main penalty culprits

One more (2 in total) than anyone else is hardly a "main penalty culprit".

Maybe not in terms of number but certainly in respect of where and when they were given away.

It was an all round shocking performance as a team and one that they were supposedly ready for and had spoken about all week yet for some reason just didn't take any of that in to account. it's a concern that nothing seems to be improving in terms of the same poor execution, ball retention and needless penalties given away when we know these have been costing us all season.

There is no point the team captain talking about in his words giving away needless stupid penalties when he does the same.
One more than anyone else means he is the main culprit

Penalties are an absolute lottery, as has been said before. The ref could give them at nearly every tackle, and the fact that Houghton makes more tackles than anyone else makes him favourite to win the penalty count.

The problem is we seem incapable of realising when the ref is whistle happy and can't stop needless penalties by messing about at PTB. The one Danny gave away on the 5th was stupid and not needed and was not down to the ref it was down to the players just not being switched on to the situation mentally.

Danny is one of the best defenders in the club if not the best but he was very much guilty of giving away careless penalties which aided our downfall significantly. What is a bit concerning is that they opening admit to talking about it all week but yet proceeded to do exactly what they'd talked about not doing. They also do not seem to be learning either that careless penalties given away and poor handling cost us in games, we were lucky top get away with it against Wakey.

Wait until we have Westerman back in! He will be the main culprit of silly penalties

Penalties coming against us because we are getting bossed up front by other teams ...simple as!
Our team has been assembled to run over other teams as we don't have speed or guile to do otherwise. With Watts gone and apart from Taylor, the rest have not really stepped up and cannot see us dominating in the forward battle too often this season ...which will continue to see us ship penalties in desperation to slow the opposition down.

Spot on
All the teams i expect to finish above us Saints,Wigan,Warrinton,Castleford and Leeds all have real speed in their teams and play not only an expansive game but have players in motion all the time when attacking.
I think Castlefords play last season opened the eyes of some coaches and even Wigan have changed their style this season for the better.
In my opinion unless our coach can find some new players to add power and pace to the squad and change our style of play we will go backwards.

Bob on. We've gone from hard as nails to soft as shiite.

Taylor is carrying that pack

We have six home games, one neutral ground and three away, we need to make hay at home and win probably all or minimum 5 home games, win at magic and 2 out of our three away games which are Huddersfield, Wakefield and Warrington, so for me i'm hoping/expecting us to win 8 out of our final 10 maybe 7 at worst and we will be sat around the four come the split, but need to be more consistent and cut out our errors and penalties

It goes without saying that we need to improve significantly in the second half of the season if we are to be proper contenders. But anyone saying no chance of top 4 is being massively OTT at this stage.

Firstly I have seen people stating that we need to win perhaps 12, maybe even 13 of the remaining 17 to make the 4. I think that is high. I think 11 gets you in for sure and there is every chance that 10 will make the cut.

These next 4 games are really important. Two games against teams we will be scrapping it out with, plus two of the easist fixtures of the year that we just can't afford to lose. But if we do win them, just look at the coming fixtures for the teams around us:

Wires next 4 are Leeds, Wigan, Hull and Cas.

Cas play Hull, Leeds, Saints and Wire.

I admit we aren't playing well but it's far too early to be writing anything off. In a month we could be sitting pretty in 3rd. With a lot of home games in the run in.