I think Cooper & Clark have steadily improved also over the past few years also, although we are talking about international players here, they should have the quality to improve. Coaches like Watson seem to take average / cast off players and turn them in to very capable SL players by applying them to a suitable game plan & structure - That is where Price struggles.

Mitigating circumstances for Currie I would argue.

I understand what you are saying Sally.
There were people prepared to by tickets on the next quantas Jumbo back to Sydney for Monaghan and I think Saints fans had a similar opinion of Peyroux.
I don't remember warrington fans being quite at that level about Lineham and Hughes.
Yes, Philbin and King have progressed well in the last 3 years but I don't remember many sustained calls for them to be moved on.
I know that towards the back end of the TS era that he had lost the ability to maintain the levels of improvement that he achieved after the shock tactics at the start of his spell with us by shipping Gleeson out and dropping Briers.
In my opinion Price tried that sort of shock tactic by putting Atkins on the outer (straight after his spectacular bombed try against Leeds in Jack Fish corner) but that didn't have the same impact that moving Gleeson on did.

I think that’s the nail on the head. The sign of a good coach is when he constantly improves players and develops them into very good/great players. Under Price I’d argue only King and Philbin have improved. As you say Cooper and Clark are international players (one is world class) so there should always be improvement irrespective of who the coach is.

It's like if you take Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool for example. He signs decent/good players all the time (never superstars barring Thiago) with the likes of Mane, Salah, Wijnaldum, Robertson, Gomez, Fabinho, Jota, van Dijk, Alisson etc but has made them into brilliant/world class players and does it year on year.

Shaun Wane is another one who constantly improves decent players and develops them into really good players.

So. Rumours are that Widdop is going West tigers next season inAussie press

Already discussed on here matey, we've said he's not on our Radar at Wests as i think Brooks and Doueihi will be our halves next season. But if we could pick him up cheap we might not pass him up. So you never know

I see Joe Greenwood has signed for Huddersfield, two comments on that regard.

- If Watson can bring Joe Greenwoods performances up to his potential that many people have talked about, he will have done exactly what we have been discussing above, couldn't see Price pulling that one off.

- Watson was said to be very interested in bringing Josh Jones to Huddersfield again, but they now have Greenwood, McQueen, Kenny Edwards and Joe Wardle at least signed up for next year, would a move for Jones look unlikely now? Unless the move would include one of those players going in the other direction in a swap deal, Hudds look loaded for backrowers now. I think Jones would be a very good signing for us, but cap space would be the problem. Would BMM, Gelling, Patton & Johnson out enable us to sign Inglis, Mulhern, Butler and Jones? Seems pushing it, unless there is movement in the Widdop or Latu / Sita situations.

You never know but i doubt it unless we finally move Widdop and Latu on, has anybody heard anything about Livett has he not already signed somewhere else or have i missed an announcement? His contract with us ended this year didn't it so he's off our books aswell?

I assume he was already off our salary cap, as he was on a season long loan.

Not heard of Livett or Patton officially yet. Intrigued to see what is happening with the former as I think he's got a career somewhere in Super League

Yeah i think Livett has all the makings to be a brilliant 13, i thought Hull KR would have kept him.and i heard rumours of Salford picking him up unless that's a no go with Watson leaving?

Official now, Livett to Salford. Damn shame and in the same week as Johnson a fairly stark illustration of how we handle and develop youth.

[url=https://www.salfordreddevils.net/red-devils-sign-harvey-livett/Livett signs for Salford[/url

2 year deal.

https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/mole-drago ... 233b2ebeea Part way down is about Widdop.

https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/mole-drago ... 233b2ebeea Part way down is about Widdop.

Interesting quotes from Fitzpatrick stating that Widdop has to deliver. Sure he was disappointing last season as were all the team barring 3-4 players but I'd love it if Karl was consistent. To be fair to Widdop his young family went to Australia halfway in to the season, he's playing in a team that is told to take 5 drives and then a kick to Toby King sure I expect more but I've not heard him mention anything about his review of Price's performance last season. Infact in the Warrington Guardian during his end of season review he just went on to say how difficult the season had been in terms of Covid and a big well done to everyone for fighting through.

Be nice for Karl to put the loyalties aside for a second and come out professionally and say Price has to deliver and that he is under pressure if hes willing to do that to other players as we are almost 4 years in under Price and he is still to deliver.

Yeh, bit odd our CEO making these kind of comments and not our coach.

Karl runs the business, Price runs the team. Unless Steve is negotiating the price of sausage rolls for when we eventually get back to the HJ?

Fantastic we really haven't given Fitzpatrick and Price enough stick. Wonderful to see it on the agenda again. (NOT)
Blimey come on gents!

It sounds a bit passive-aggressive from KF. Did he allow Widdop to look for other options or not? If Widdop is unhappy over here, and wanted to reunite with his young family in Aus, then its a difficult situation for him, now that that hasn't happened and he has to come back here. Surely it would have been better to say something like we'll be supporting Gareth in anyway we can to make his time in Warrington a success, and I know he'll handle this like the great professional he has been over his whole career.

Saying "we're expecting great things" kind of means, "we aren't expecting great things but we want to be able to be bitchy about it and criticise him if he doesn't dominate this season", and all this stuff about "put the rumour and innuendo behind him"....its not him that is starting the rumours is it.

I was hoping Widdop would find another club down under, it would have been better for him, and better for us too if he's a big earner because in my opinion he's not the player he was. But if he's back lets support him and make the best of it. As long as he gives his best, even if he's past his best.

KF seems unnecessarily snarky there.

But I'm expecting "great things" from Fitzpatrick this season, its time for him to put all the big talk behind him and deliver a Super League title, or else lets move on.

I have decided to adopt my workplace motto “expect the worst but hope for the best” for the coming season.

Yeah Widdop needs a good year to actually entice an NRL club to sign him. So it could be a blessing for us, we've improved in the areas we needed to and in the interview KF did awhile ago, saying price needs to do better and he needs to improve our attack, clearly shows he's told price he needs to sort his poop out. I'm excited and have high hopes for this season and nothing anyone says can change that for me

SP couldn't sort our stale attack out during the latter half of 2019 despite his mantra 'we know what's wrong and know how to fix it'.
He couldn't. He didn't.
The CC games against Hull and Saints were 'one offs'.

The start of the following season promised so much with a really good 1st 2 games with more exciting footy, but then it was like 'oooh, I'm out of my comfort zone. Let's go back to what we did last year'.

I'd love to be positive but.....

The one thing I do want to see is Greg Inglis. That for me is the one positive.

Great post and my point entirely.

Maybe if the same tone had been used towards his best mate (Price) sometime in the last 4 years we may have actually kicked on and not looked like an average team.

Or maybe winning involves a bit more than just bollocking the manager?

To win you need a decent manager/coach. The buck stops with the coach. All well and good slagging off Widdop but who signed the bloke?

It all seems so easy. You sack the manager, the head coach, the other coaches, half the players and hey ho ... you win the league. Like taking candy ...
Off we go again.

Where are you getting four years from? His first game in charge was February 2018.

Year before he took over we finished ninth, have we been better under Price?