Having witnessed another nine tries leaked, I am left wondering if 'The General' is just about the worst defensive full back we've ever had. Yes, he looks a class act when joining the line and gives some neat passes. DEFENSIVELY, I've lost count of how many times he's let the ball bounce from high kicks, been handed off by opposition backs on their way to the line and been completely out of position when tries have been scored.

I've just had another look at the highlights of the debacle at Hull and Patten doesn't lay a hand on the opposition eight times and gets 'swatted' on the ninth. As the last line of defence, I'm afraid he's been found wanting this season. I hope the new Coach can bring some improvement. Patten MUST be better than the form he'd shown for the Reds so far.

I sincerely hope the Coach can make a difference to the Team quickly, It would be fantastic to finish the season on a high. (Beat HKR, Leeds, Hudds and avoid drubbings at Saints and Wigan before a big finale at the Willows). COME ON YOU REDS!

I wonder occasionally if we'll see Pattern maybe play at stand off?

I know it's a leap but look at Darren Lockyer, he played at #1 and then when time started to maybe cqtch him up a little his guille was moved further up the pitch where he didn't need to be as athletic. Think Pattern would make a quality fullback.

Though to be fair to him we could have had Slater at fullback at times this season and he would have been as helpless as Pattern.

For me, the defensive thing doesn't really bother me. As a fullback you are last line and if the opposition scores the finger of blame often falls on you, instead of the handful of players that maybe should have tackled them in the line. Secondly, and this is just my personal point of view, a fullback is best served as an extra attacker than a defensive safety pin. They can contribute far more than just taking a few kicks and making the odd last-ditch tackle. Patten is only second in assists to Holdsworth, who has the highest assists in Superleague. For me, that out-weighs the odd defensive slip or brain-fart.

I'm pretty sure Luke has been disappointed with some of his performances, and will up his game as best he can, being the professional he is.

True
Comparing Stats on Patten to Brett Hodgson this season and he's arguably Full Back behind the top team in the league :-
PATTEN HODGSON
Position 1 Position 1
Appearances 21 Appearances 20
Tries 4 Tries 15
Try assists 15 Try Assists 22
Meters 1873 Meters 2241
Carries 371 Carries 325
Tackles 102 Tackles 90
Offloads 25 Offloads 17
Runs from half 43 Runs from Half 40
Tackle Busts 60 Tackle Busts 51
Marker tackles 6 Marker Tackles 6
Clean Breaks 9 Clean Breaks 20
Missed tackles 33 Missed Tackles 29
Errors 21 Errors 26

Hodgson's missed almost as many tackles and made more errors than Patten , he's scored more tries & made more yardage as befits his position sat behind one of the best teams in the league , What would Hodgsons stats have looked like had he played for us ?
Seem to remember Slater making a god awful mistake in a World Cup Final.
I remember Garry Jack arriving with a ' Best Full Back 'in World Tag ' and then seeing Offiah wizz straight past him.
We don't need better Full backs, we need a better team ..

Spot on to both

It's like a keeper at football, you make a clanger and everyone knows about it however a player makes a mistake further up the field and no one bats an eyelid. I agree Patten has made a number of errors but defence for me should be an issue, when you look at his attacking stats they are very, very good indeed. We've had defensive full backs for years, how many times did we grumble that Fitzy didn't break the first tackle. Gary Broadbent who was fantastic for us but he didn't break many tackles of, make tries or score that many. Not a slight at these lads but I'm just trying to make a point.

What I was trying to say exactly.

You don't buy a try saving full back in this day and age, you buy one who prompts from tha back as Pattern undoubtedly does and who is an attacking force and don't think we've had better for many a year.

Put him at the back of the Wigan or Warrington defence and he'd score a shed load more tries and not have a load of turnstyles in front of him.

I agree with the points made about patten not being there for his defence but serious some of his attempt's at the tackles are a disgrace, he is shi!t scared of getting his body in for a tackle and just lets players run around him or grabs at them like a fairy, Yes the full back these days are used as another attacking option but you still have to be able to defend its part of rugby, say for example Holdsworth defence was as bad as pattens would people see it ok for him to miss tackles? after all his role on the field is organizing/creating try's no people would be moaning he needs to improve it simple.

Now im not saying i expect him to tackle everything that comes his way as i fully understand he is an attacking player and a great one at that but he could at least make more of an attempt some of Fridays were actually embarrassing.

Fella whilst he may have done slightly better the question that need to be asked is how have the opposition got into that position in the first place, far too often in the past we've had to rely on a full back to make a try saving tackle (and Patten has done a few himself) what we don't see is that he'll be organising the defence for the next tackle thinking that his team in front of him will wrap up this guy who's on a solo run, instead he'll need to change direction and try to catch the likes of Briscoe and that's no mean feat. We don't spot the full back until it's much further on when it becomes one on one or worse. How did Briscoe get through, how did Tickle get through etc there the questions MP has to find answers for.

He's far from perfect but aren't most of our players?

Firstly is Patten a massive improvement on Fitzy ? YES 1000% !

I starting following the Reds the season after the playoff year and TBH how he stayed the Number one fullback through right till the end of last season I'll never know . Nothing in attack and laughable when bringing the ball back !

Patten is a presence and It's great to see him lining up EVERY SINGLE WEEK ! . He has had shaky moments and from what I have seen always demands the highest standards from himself ! Defensively if he is the last line then the damage to the line has already been done and the likelihood is he will be outnumbered anyway !

Offensively he is fast , strong , wise and obv links up with DJ really well (If a little obvious at times !)

I for one do not Doubt him and I think we will be hard pushed to find a better replacement when his contract is up !

I agree mate MP needs to seriously look at how the line is getting broke in the first place because its getting broke far to easy i agree with that and yes that way you don't have to rely on patten but in any game of rugby the line is going to get broke at some point, now when that does happen weather its another players fault or not are we now saying its ok for them to score because we all know patten cant defend? A full back for me still needs to be able to defend in the modern game. This is just my opinion though i don't expect everyone to agree just the way i see it.

patten is a classy player but salfford just need to improve the team and the new coach can put some good structures in place to allow the likes of patten to show more

I want my fullback to join the line and link in with the attack, his defence isn't the best but I've seen worse and he doesn't like to catch anything on the full but he has the ability to get himself out of trouble most of the time.

I would like him to link up with Matty smith a bit better like he does with DJHoldsworth but I feel this may come in time.

Defensively our structure isn't the best but I feel patten plugs the gap who h appear, the area of the field we need to address is our right channel (rachford,smith) and our left channel (Anderson and Gibson/gleeson ) teams tend to send heavy traffic over to the right channel smith n rachford usually trying to tackle far bigger n stronger units than themselves, lots of grabbing going on rather than tackling so its something to look into.

Anderson great in attack always promotes the ball but needs to bend his back a little more in defence, Gibson shoots out of the line in defence too much creating overlaps.

Parish can address our edge defence and our line speed so we are going forward in defence rather than losing the contact and 5 yards every tackle who knows what we can do.

Really interested to see the responses to my thread. It seems that most people view full back as more of an attacking position than a defensive one. If that's the case, indeed Patten can be seen as a success. However, it may be old fashioned, but for me I prefer a full back who can put his body on the line and is effective under a high ball.

If that turns out to be MP's view, our priority is to assemble a pack that can dominate the opposition and have half backs and Centres who do not resemble turnstiles. If not, surely an attacking full back is a luxury we can't afford.

Must admit I'm never confident when he's fielding a kick of any sort, theres always that doubt that he may drop it or do something stupid and as for when the line is broken well we can forget him making a tackle a try is defiantly on the cards.

Saying that he is a class act going forward not doubting that for one minute, but we need to remember that if you play at Salford you need to be able to defend as well as attack because more often than not the line will be broke or we will be required to mop things up on our own line.

I think Tex Evans caught more bombs than Patten! The hype surrounding Luke before his arrival hasn't lived up to expectations IMO and I guess thats where my critic of him started. In the first friendly he played against Wigan I stated he looked very suspect in defence and was shouted down, I stick by that opinion and believe to have been proved right.

It's been stated on this thread in a way that most people prefer an attacking FB rather than a defensive one or to put it another way - a modern FB rather than the traditional. Paul Wellens stands head and shoulders above the rest in adopting both the old and the new for mine.

Luke is a good player - not great but half decent, he has cost Salford more points than I can remember from simple mistakes where previous FB's did not and for mine that stands out alarmingly! However I much prefer the way Salford are playing with the style of attack he offers than the way they have in the past. If the defensive line is so weak and Patten can't tackle very well there is always the option of playing two FB's when defending, it's been done before!

If Patten is weak at tackling why not move him to the wing when were defending and then move him back to fullback when we are attacking. He could switch places with Mark Henry.

TBH I'm unsure whether I worry more about his tackling or his failure to be able to catch a bomb and the more I think about it the more I like the idea of two FB's, would give the oppostion a lot more to think about and could change the modern game into something more interesting than the 50+ hammerings we witness in games week in week out plus O/T I'd also like to see the 3 points for a win and bonus point introduced into SL.

I think that FB's ability under the high ball is pretty old hat these days as most bombs are contested by centres and wingers, with FB's taking only a tiny percentage compared to the past. Look at Steve Hampson. I don't think he ever dropped a high ball. I certainly never seen him drop one that I can remember. On the other hand, his tackling was awful and his attacking play pretty good.

Ok, the General's tackling hasn't been great but I stand by my previous post as it being secondary to an extra attacker.

I'm really in favour of those 2 ideas.
As for using 2 FB's, that could be workable, but it'd probably see off the 40/20 to some degree. Therefore, I'm not sure if that would be a good thing.

Surely if there is one less player in the defensive line then teams will exploit the extra space. Fullbacks are only effective in defending 1 on 1 line break situations, if the team that make the break have support they are about as much use as an ejector seat in a helicopter.

Yes thats possible but the defending team has to man-up and not allow any extra space, working a little harder shouldn't be a negative (note Catalans recently when they have had a man sent off!) and when a line break does happen you have double the second defensive line to cope with a supporting player.

As for bombs to FB's TB, Luke has received his fair share this season! ( I wonder why?

)

Having only just seen this post, I can honestly say I am suprised it has taken so long. the situation is becoming simmillar to the Gary Jack years,where critisism was just brushed away as "your wrong" if you didn,t fall in line with the licking. In fairness Ithink any player needs two seasons to settle,so lets judge next year,but remember when Jack came to Salford he was without doubt the best fullback in the world,but was a disaster for us,but no critisism was allowed,let us judge on what we see,and no be led by the nose.For me I expected a lot more but am willing to give him more time,but not to much.

I'm confident now Matt Parish is on board Luke Patten will come good.

It's always hard for any overseas players when they first come over.

Patten is a class attacking full back but of course when he is the last line of defence things have not always gone his way this season.

Personally i have not been a fan of Patten and think he is very over rated and he had under rated the quality of super league at times. Yes as mentioned above his attacking skills and stats are impressive but the defensive display(yes i know those in front of him were not much better)on friday was a joke and we would have been better playing a very good friend of mine from the north east at full back !!

I find it amazing that we get ourselves a top quality FB and people still find cause to complain. We are, currently, not a top 8 side and for some reason Patten is supposed to play like Robo-fullback and play the perfect game every week? Without going over old ground, I see where people are coming from but you are never gonna get the perfect player. As it stands, I'd rather have Patten with his current stats than many alternatives that could be playing for us.

As a progressive side we should be looking at Patten with a glass half-full mentality, not the other way around. Given a choice to swap his attacking capabilities for a fullback that could only defuse bombs and tackle line breaks, I would stick with his current stats.

The best fullbacks in the world are attacking fullbacks, not defence machines. This is 2011 not 1973.