Sorry but your last sentence IMO is ridiculous. We can't stop saying that every time we get beat. We're in superleague and we've had 18/20 months to get ourselves up to a decent standard and get some consistent composure throughout. Can't see any of that

It's his post match reaction that gets me.."it was an improvement from last week so thats a positive"..is he for real?!! And then is nice and calm saying the players are trying very hard and we just need a few wins. I really hoped he would come out and say how bad we were and that we need to improve but no. It will be another "unlucky boys keep your heads up". We need someone who can get into the players when needs be. It's all too matey in the widnes camp..ok yes of course you want them all to get on etc. but in my opinion it all seems a bit 'too' soft. The players simply didn't have any enthusiasm whatsoever tonight and it was so disappointing to see. Wakey wanted it so much more. Yes they werent great either tonight and made mistakes too but they were eager and wanted to get the ball..we didn't. Lousy effort tonight and very very disappointing

We can as we are missing them. Like it or lump it, we as the newest team have arguably the least strength in depth so when we lose good players we feel it more than clubs who have been in the SL system for longer.

I think that the pre-match comments by the SKY presenters summed us up. "Widnes are at their best when they attack down the left hand side with Brown, Hock, Hanbury and Ah Van". What did Wakefield do, pack their defence on their right hand side. If that is the only way we can attack we need to start looking again at our tactics. Why did it take 65 minutes to give Gore a chance? Was Phelps injured?

Although it may be true that we have made progress from last season, when you start from such a low point as that, then it's pretty hard not to I think. A more relevant question IMO is how much progress have we made since we beat Hull early this season, or drew with Bradford with 12 men? Sorry to say that the answer is none at all. On the contrary, we have gone backwards , and by a long way, since those performances.

I'd agree with that Vinty. Would you say it's to do with our lack of strength to call upon?

Personally didn't think the Widnes players looked interested. You had an awful lot of ball but were very predictable in using your left hand side combination of Brown, Hock etc.

In previous games I've seen (limited) you've looked a much better side than I saw tonight. I think with the right mindset you could have quite easily won tonight. I think your pack needs definite improvement

Until we put in some kind of defence we will not win these games. You can now list 6 games were we should have won but because the defence is all over the place we have lost or drawn. If Betts can't see this well he is in the wrong job.

I would agree that the squad is nowhere near strong enough, but we've had worse teams out this season than tonight and played better, so I wouldn't blame that on tonight. Our main fault IMO is atrocious ball control and it's the same week after week. How many times do we lose the ball on the 1st or 2nd tackle and immediately find ourselves defending again? When we played Wigan the other week, we defended for 12 tackles near our line. Scrum down, our ball, long pass to Ah Van out wide which he drops (1st tackle). Scrum down, their ball, they score, we lose game by 2 points. Posted earlier that it's same old, same old every week and that's where we are not improving at all. It's not so much bad defence as not respecting possession and always putting pressure on ourselves and it's so frustrating to watch every week.

Its strange really,since some of our players have got contract extensions our team performances have(apart from bratfud away)have been woeful,just saying

It's not great, I'll give you that no problem. At this moment, I reckon we're running on fumes and there are no options left due to us being at our limits. We really do need to kick on but I think it will be next season now before we do that.

look in SOOPER DOOPER league, it's either silverware/play offs, or nothing....then focus on next season. Widnes can look forward to 2014.

Spot on mate and your team was for the taking last night with Sykes and Collis injured early on.Betts in my opinion is not the best coach in the world and I thought Powell be better.Why Betts gave Pickgersgill and Leuluai a 2 yr contract shows lack of direction.Yes Leuluai shows effort but never hardly busts the line.65 mins to put Gore on to freshen up Clarke?I like Clarke but not a zippy number 9 and to get the best out of him then a longer rest required.Betts does not seem a great tactician.

We were poor last night, but we had chances maybe to win the match if we had shown a little more composure and enthusiasm. The bomb from Craven in the 1st half summed up our performance, a good bit of skill but the chase was non existant.

Danny Kirmonds performance typified Wakefields performance.

Thought our pack looked very weak last night - Wakey had such a territorial advantage they should have pasted us.

In Betts' defence you can't coach players to knock on the ball as often as they did last night, but without Mellor we really struggled for some fluency going forward.