On the whole, it's not the squad that is the main issue. Our main issue is that no matter who we recruit we will see the same stagnation under the current coach. We saw exactly the same under Agar - he lacked the ability to develop players and so does Radford - they start to go backwards and as a result the team becomes predictable and devoid of the basic skills.

It really is like groundhog day, and the most depressing thing is the cycle was broken after Agar left and we were seeing the start of good things under Gentle - I really thought we'd seen the back of the dark days three years ago. I think this is why a lot of people are finding it so hard to stomach this time around, we were out of the woods only to find ourselves needlessly plunged back into the thickest part.

We need a new hooker,some of the passes Houghton gave out on Friday was shocking and he got caught at acting half when they was down to 12 men.I have said about Sa's fitness before and maybe offloading him but I may be a bit contreversial here and say Ellis is as much injury prone now.

Was talking about this with Mrs Kosh yesterday and the list of players we'd like to keep was depressingly short. Houghton, Sa, and Ellis weren't on it BTW for the very reasons you state.

interesting as ithink a lot of blame goes houghtons way but if he played for a top team would be up there amongst the top hookers, Sa is a strange one as imo dont think hes second row more centre where he can do a lot of damage but has injury doubts as goes with ellis, but when on the field hes still a top player, trouble is will he stay injury free, sods law we let him go he joins say leeds and plays the next 3 years injury free lol,

Houghton would look far better in a team where he didn't have to play so many minutes, and make so any tackles.
Be careful what you wish for and all that.
Even Thurston would look like a Championship player in our current set up.

We dont need any new players. This team needs a new coaching team/ethos - that is all

For me, there are 3 categories to break players down into: Those to definitely keep, those to give another year's opportunity (preferably under another coach) to earn further time, those to ditch. Category 1 is worryingly sparse these days. Thinking positively, Category 2 is probably more occupied than 3, though.

Hard to recruit a better coach than Radford? There are 5/6 in the championship that would love yo come here, plenty of coaches in the NRL that would do a miles better job.

Let's be honest there are many armatures coaches who could improve our attacking play and understand how to use subs effectively.

Short term (and long term assistant) I'd take Glen Morrison, highly respected in SL and the NRL and doing a great job at Dewsbury.

Excluding the youngsters who haven't properly broken through I would categorise the players as follows:

Must keep (would get into almost any side imo):

Shaul (needs to improve a lot but huge potential)
Lineham
Paea
Westerman
Thompson

Must go:

Yeaman
Paleaasina
Whiting
Howarth
Michaels

Then you've got a mix of guys like Ellis, Minichiello and Pryce, who can still do a good job but aren't worth another contract due mainly to their age. Guys for whom the jury is still out, ie, Sneyd, Cunningham, Hadley. And then guys who are solid Superleague standard players, but won't ever amount to more than that such as Houghton and Watts.

It's not a title winning squad in a million years, but it's really not a terrible one either. They should be comfortably making the top 8.

i largely agree with your lists but think with the right coach watts and sneyd could become much better players so i would retain them as well. similarly if we had a decent coach crooks would still be around playing some good stuff too.