Is he playing on Thursday? Really want to see this guy in action ASAP!

The 19 for Thursday's game should be announced tomorrow.

If he's touch and go as believed he will be in the squad with a late fitness test. Heard whispers of Goodwin having a knock too.

I think the longer the season goes on and the dryer the pitches get we will see the best of Tyrone Roberts. I am still very much looking forward to "The New Era" Wire on Thursday. Everything that is coming out of the club from the Coach, Players and Staff is very encouraging.

Too early to see any signs of our new attacking style - I think that will come around May time when the pitches are drier and the team has gelled a bit.

I’m expecting a good defensive structure and superior fitness to get us through the first few months, then hopefully we’ll start to see some of Mr Tumble’s spotty bag of treats... although I still think 2018 is a bit too early for a successful season. Top 4 would be ideal but 5-6 with a good cup run is a fair shout until next year, then there are no excuses.

That said, the league isn’t particularly strong from 1-12 so even if we finish 6-7 at the split there’s still a remote chance of grand final glory. Leeds looked a poor second for most of the season and never reallly shone - until one night in October.

There are no excuses now.
If I buy something for the greatest amount of money....I'd expect that item to have the highest quality or at least something that would match the market leader.
If I was happy with mediocre I'd get my items from poundland.

This whole 6th 7th and even 8th malarkey (not just having a pop at you easywire pal) is the biggest load of codswallop I've read on these boards and I include my own posts in that so you can understand the level of depth!!

I understand where you’re coming from re: money spent - but if you bought a brand new car that came with a free driver, and that driver had never driven that type of car before you’d have to give him a little while to get used to it before he got the best out of it. If this amount of money had been spent with Smith still in charge I’d demand nothing less than a trophy - preferably the big one, not the cup (and definitely not the Mickey Mouse crockery set).

However, Price hasn’t even had a full pre-season with the players, the star buys are not all fit yet, and the first 17 haven’t played together. Give them a season to show steady improvement and strong defence, and hopefully by the split we will see a team that can make a push for the top 4 playoffs. Look at Saints last year - if it wasn’t for a Morgan brain fart in the semi they’d maybe have won a grand final. Maybe. And that’s after a pretty dire run before the split.

Agree with what you are saying RD about expectations. There should be no bedding in period, these are full time professional rugby players. Nothing less than top 4 will be a satisfactory from what we have assembled. Wigan only just finished above us in the League and they have recruited no-one apart from a 21 year old wonder boy from Aus who made hid debut against Leigh and they are raving him up!! (Good grief it was Leigh FFS) St Helens (Champions elect in some peoples eyes) recruited No-One and I didnt see enough off them to scare me, we even stuffed them at home. Leeds have recruited Myler and Dwyer while losing their two Talismen. We all saw what a Hardaker less Cas did in the GF. There is only us in my humble Primrose and blue tinted spectacled opinion who have significantly improved. What is everyone seeing that I cannot?

We have signed some talented players and a new coach. We should certainly improve. However, this is not disimilar from what Salford did a few years ago after the Koukash takeover and the 'all new' Salford side did not gel at all in the first season. Nothing is guaranteed in RL these days. I'm optimistic, but I don't see that pressurising the new setup for immediate top-four finish gets us anywhere.

How long did it take Steve Jobs to turn Apple around from the floor up? The fruits of his leadership didn’t show for at least two years. And Steve Jobs is not in charge of Warrington.

If we aren’t looking like title contenders by next pre-season, then fair enough I’ll be disappointed... we have deliberately left space on the cap THIS season to shore up the front row and so our squad isn’t really even complete yet for 2018. Patience and progress.

to be fair, they did bring in about 13 new players, none of which were (really) top notch, some had clouds over them and others were really really bad.

THEN they made a big song and dance about it, whilst most other fans looked and rolled their eyes at them.

Top spot is a big ask, but top 4 and hence a semi-final has to be the minimum expectation.

It will take a few rounds to settle and gel, but if we're not comfortably in the top 4 by the 8's split then we've underachieved.

If we were to take the tact of settling for 6th/7th/8th, having a transition year, and build for the future, then we might as well play Patton and Livett in the halves, have let Leigh keep Goodwin, and saved our cash on Roberts.

We've signed the highest paid player in the league. That's not to secure us 7th. That's to make us competitive now.

The work behind the scenes, the probable succession plan with Henderson, the new head of youth etc will all hopefully come to fruition later - but we've also made changes to the first team to make us competitive this season - the board know anything less is a threat to our revenue.

Have we? I'd be surprised if that wasn't Tomkins...

I think we will have Roberts on a much bigger wage than Tomkins. We needed a top half back in his prime and that meant prizing one away from a well paid job in the NRL - there are no genuine high quality half backs in the UK even considering Luke Gale. Roberts won’t have come cheap - let’s hope he’s able to recreate that magic over here.

We offered Sam more money than Wigan. Work that out.

At last there is someone who gets it.

There's a lot of hype here about Tyrone Roberts but I worry that he's being set up to fail.

He does look impressive on the highlights montages on that video sharing website and so I am looking forward to see him in the P&B.

But lets be realistic about him being a one man show. In the years he was Newcastle halfback they finished 12th, 7th, 12th, 16th (wooden spoon). When he was at Gold Coast they finished 8th and 15th. He wasn't such an influential player as to pull them up to the top tier.

There are a lot of question marks over our other signings too. I've been a Wire fan for long enough to see a lot of overseas signings come and go and a lot of flops. You start to recognise certain warning signs:

- being over 30
- having had a 'journeyman' career
- being a squad player rather than a first choice in the NRL
- being a 'utility' player without a set position

Bryson Goodwin and Mitch Brown are both 30 plus, have moved around clubs. Brown barely played an NRL game in his last couple of seasons at Cronulla before joining Leigh. The fact we signed both of them from Leigh also makes me worry a bit! Brown was a 'utility back'.

Sitaleki Akauola was a squad player at Penrith, he wasn't a first choice starter. He is another 'utility player' - we are told he is a second row or winger who can play prop! Well hopefully he is an emerging Ruben Wiki!

I am not writing these guys off. You could have asked similar questions about Nat Wood, Darren Burns and Sid Domic, who were all excellent players for us. They all had superb professional attitudes and represented the primrose and blue in the right way which set a good standard for others, so if our new intake of overseas players do the same I will be hopeful of success.

But at the moment I don't see anything to wow me about our recruitment, or about our new coach who did not do well as a head coach in the NRL.

There's a lot of expectation here at the start of the season about being top 4 and competitive but last season we had a mediocre pack, the backline lacked pace, and what makes people think those problems will go away? It is still broadly the same team that nearly got relegated.

A couple of months in to the season, are we going to have a huge hindsight brigade on here, telling us that ANYBODY could have seen we needed better recruitment, ranting about Russell, Lineham, Brown, Hughes or whoever, asking why they are still in the team, and with big wishlists for 2019 and the vast overhaul we will need....

one answer to that Sally is a Mr hicks. He was a little unknown who turned out well you know the rest

Agree with most of that, but a bit unfair on Goodwin. Certainly not in his prime, but a solid player. Not prolific but 200 NRL appearances and 10 for New Zealand, with 1 try every 3 games is better than some of our centres and his defence and ground work are quality. There aren’t many NRL players available these days but Goodwin is not a journeyman reject and I think he’ll go well - nothing spectacular but a cut above what we’ve had since the days of Bridge on that right side.

Gidley came from a wooden spoon NRL team and made the SL dream team plus 2 finals the next year with us.

Parramatta had a pretty poor record then Sandow came over here and lit up SL.

Wests finished 10th then 9th, then an aging Hodgson came over to SL and won MOS.

I would argue that NRL team records and even age have little relevance to how they'll go in SL.

I expect our performance levels to be much better, I don't mind them losing to a better team on the day, that's sport. I don't expect out attack to be fully fluent at this stage when Roberts hasn't played with any of his team mates yet.

My reservation about this season is that I think our squad is a bit small, we will get a few injuries at some point and we could struggle at the business end of the season.

....that's where that tiny bit of spare salary cap (£50k apx) could show it's worth. It won't buy a feather duster now but it could buy class as the split comes if required!!

Old Sally C. is a real bundle of joy isn't he?The idea that decent players never play for clubs who finish mid-table or near the bottom of the league is a flawed generalisation. Bit of garbage wrapped up with a few stats.

Saints wasn't high flying when Barba joined for sure.

I’ll be interested to see whether Barba can do for Saints what Sandow did for us. Not quite as many tricks in his bag compared to Sandow but devastating runner and probably more focussed and less prone to ‘outside influences’ - despite his drugs history. I think he’ll last longer than Sandow too.