Interesting comment from Smith when interviewed.
Saying we have been narrowly beat in a few games but it is a result based competition or words to that effect.
Maybe he knows that he is now on thin ice losing 5 out of the last 6 regardless of us losing narrowly.

You've been right about him all along, Batley. Fair play. He's a genuine liability.

Good day out up in Newcastle, kids were flag bearers so enjoyed it regardless.

Can’t even be ar$ed to get into the performance but Olpherts was a disgrace in every department. Not alone I know, but he should never wear a Leeds jumper again.

Rohan out of his depth, sooner he’s gone the better for me.

For me that was a selection loss. We select Handley on the wing Hooley at FB; or Tindall wing and I think we win that game.

One thing that triggers me is rubbish defence and both edges were really fragile at times.

Oledski had his best game for a while though and McDonnell continues to impress me.

Smith had his hands tied in recruitment and tried to do the best he could with the budget he had and one or two have been good; but not the right selection for me again tonight.

Having said that our injury situation is savage again.

Agree that some selections are not working. Handley might want to be a full back but is nowhere near - being a strong runner just isn't enough. Martin isn't a centre, and Myler isn't a halfback. Smith said earlier in the season that he picks the best players regardless of position, and he does that. But we're ending up with imbalanced teams and players with no muscle memory of the position they're in.

Another huge problem is individual errors. Far too many players are making bad errors, often with their first touch of the ball. Some mistakes will happen, but it speaks of a slack mindset as a group when so many are being made. Stop patting each other on the back when it happens and go James Graham on them.

We need to look at Hooley or Sinfield coming in next week. If he doesn't change things we'll just keep losing. As it is we may already be too far off the pace to make the play offs, as if Leigh and Sts both win we'll be 4 points off even 7th. Making up that ground will need us to start winning most of our games from now on, but also for the wheels to fall off more than one team currently ahead of us.

I still support Smith, and I understand what he was trying to do with respect to recruitment given the constraints he had in the off-season, but at the moment this season looks like its going to just wither to nothing, and its really poor that we can seemingly play hard and compete with the top teams but lose in awful games to teams below us in the table.

I read a post by a Castleford fan saying Olpherts was the best bit of business they did and Leeds now pay him, funny that we thought the same when we got rid to Cas, every time the ball went up in the air to him you had your head in your hands knowing he was going to knock on or create some kind of catastrophe. He was named Derrell AWFUL at Salford.

As for the other fella Roberts we got rid of him to Swinton, say no more.

The squad is not up to standard, even the low standard Super League has now.

Its not the coach who makes the signings at Leeds, but the coach is the one who gets sacked when the one who does make the signings feels the pressure from the fans. A decade and a half of decline.

A decade and a half? Eh?

JJB has an agenda!! Him now being on the board at Leeds does not bode well for Smith.

The culture of the club needs to move on from the golden generation and it probably needed a coach with a history of delivering that ie putting his own imprint on the rugby side of things. Smith was a punt and no doubt at a discount to the likes of Peter Green. Unfortunately he is still on a huge learning curve and is SL is biggest club the correct place for that?

I have repeatedly on here all you want is the players to play to their potential win or lose - this so rarely happens you have to question the coaching set up. A young coach needs experience around him - where has Grix coached prior to Leeds? Playing players out of position doesn't work nobody gets settled in a pattern - why persist?

Yes recruitment has been poor but that squad should be able to be the likes of Leigh and Castleford and be somewhere near the playoffs - sadly not going to happen. I am not for moving Smith on just yet but he needs to see improvement in the basics and desire of the players to deliver for him

but.
do you trust him to move forward?
spend the huge cap space wisely? he will have an input.
Robert's, olpherts were his signings and both are garbage.
do you get rid and write the season off? I personally think both smith and hetherington should stand aside. hetheringtons last good decision anyone?

I’d certainly be seeing who else might be available, someone with experience of coaching at at first class level.

Because Handley played fullback for Oulton u12's and trained there for an hour in pre season, some rubbish like that i would imagine. An already disrupted team by injury, made even worse by poor selection

The squad lacks good leadership too, it’s a huge problem

Time to pack your bags Smith. You are clueless as a SL coach, stick to under 12s. When is the next flight out.

Does Peter Smith watch with his eyes closed, giving Olpherts a 6 (meaning his contribution was the same as his assessment of Oledzki!) Martin and Bentley 7. Despite his years observing the game he really knows nothing about it.

Graham - jury is out on Smith - as has proved in Beeston chopping and changing coaches doesn't always deliver the desired outcomes. Leeds are between a rock and a hard place of their own making. If you were an experienced NRL coach would you come to Leeds - its a basket case at the moment. Someone like Rowley could possibly sort it out if you wanted a UK coach.

It needs a DOR who is in charge of recruitment - the coach has to coach the players the club recruits. Coaches don't last as long as players. Youth development/scouting needs a massive overall. There are 19 coaches yes 19 in the youth set up. I know there is a massive love in with Butterill on here but he isn't delivering and this is elite sport.

The most worrying is the lack of development of the players coming into the first team. The likes of Oldeski, Smith, Handley are not developing beyond reasonable SL players.

It should always be evolution before revolution but maybe revolution is what is needed here

do you trust smith to deliver?
do you trust him to bring the right players in?

if the answers no he has to go now

If after 14 games in moving Handley to fb is preferable to giving hooley a game even though the backs are shot with injuries, then he's been a poor signing too.

I know what you’re saying Tads but Smith really hasn’t had much cap to play with so far.

MacDonald and McDonnell have been good although Nene can be rubbish in D at times.

I don’t know if he had involvement in Sangare or not but I think he’s been a solid signing and just what we needed - mass.

Roberts is still young and Hooley wasn’t a crazy idea as cover. Olpherts is an awful signing.

I think we have to give Smith another year at least to see what he can do with a squad more of his own making. Changing coach again - well who do we bring in and what difference would it make when the squad just isn’t a champion side?

Smith has created a bi problem for himself now.
I can't see him being sacked mid-season, but he's got to turn things around to have a chance of being here next year.
The honeymoon period is long over and last years GF a very distant memory.
We can't keep saying this isn't his team.
He has to show some basic coaching skills and the ability to prepare a team to put in decent, coherent performances to give us a chance of winning matches.
That's just not happening at the moment. Even in the games we've won, we have been all over the place at times.
We are genuinely going backwards.

We have a massive off season coming up in terms of recruitment, so we have to be sure we have the coach in place who is going to take that forward.
Much more of this over the next few weeks and Smith is ruling himself out of that.
Hetherington will be planning for a change.

A loss against Wakefield and I think he will be sacked.

Olpherts is STILL better than Tindall.

What does that say about current depth in the backs....?

There's no way he'll be sacked this year, and neither should he. We went for bargain-basement signings this year because with the utter shower under Agar we were somehow at the full cap with marquee players on top and yet a rubbish first 17 and zero squad depth. We could argue about some of the incomings, but he had no budget to play with and went scouting the Championship, in some cases just to give him an option other than a 17-year old if someone got injured.

Having said that, he has clearly made some mistakes this year. The soft off-season bit us hard, as did the passive defence, which at least seems to have gone. But he's persisting with the 'best player regardless of position' mantra and it just doesn't work in the key positions. On top of that players seemingly aren't being punished for bad mistakes.

The fact is that at our best with everyone fit we've shown we can probably compete with anybody. But the huge gap between our best and worst is the mark of a poor side, not a good one. Sts (and Leeds) in previous years could cruise through a lot of games and win with plenty to spare because they had genuine quality throughout. We just don't have that. I can't see it changing much regardless of coach unless we make some big signings this off-season and they come off in a way that most of our recent signings just haven't.

In that respect I'd rather trust Smith's judgement than Hetherington, who has overseen an utterly disastrous recruitment and retention strategy for getting on close to a decade now. It'd be unfair to judge Smith's ability there given the restrictions he was under last off-season. I think he has to be given the chance to use some genuine cap space and then be judged on what happens next season.

As a terrible former winger, I feel qualified to spot a terrible current winger.

On the evidence of this season no - on last maybe?

We don't know what was said to him re. recruitment - possibly we £150k on the cap - do your best!!