im not one who gets at fielden - i think hes ok, not value for money or anything but ok.

where wigan fail is that they will never drop a guy like fielden so dont worry about any up and coming players cos theres certain untouchables - generally linked to money and reputation

Do you mean players like Richards, Calderwood, Coley and Smith?

Thats a point I discussed with another poster earlier on in the thread, I think that to play prop effectively you need the balance of the two, lean muscle weight and body fat.

That said, his lean muscle weight never harmed him during his Bradford days.

Fielden has gone back into his shell after getting back to good form for the latter part of last season. He doesn't look like his heart is quite into it at the moment which is a big problem for us as we need him to be at the top of his game and leading us every week.

He's always been a player that only truely turned up when the big games came around and at Bradford he could get away with that as the likes of Anderson and Vagana would do enough work on his off days to see them through. He isn't afforded that luxery here because the rest of the props either aren't good enough to lead a side forward or in Feka's case don't so it for long enough.

As for his future long term at the club i'd offer him a long-ish term deal tomorrow on a vastly reduced deal in the hope that we could sign him a fellow prop to help share the load but i'm not sure he'd accept it until he's considered all his options. If for example a team like Celtic or Salford offered him twice as much as us in a couple of years i reckon he'd take it which probably shows another problem in him. He admitted when he came here that half(and probably more) the reason was for the cash so a move to a team near the bottom of the league probably wouldn't worry him.

Overall i'd be suprised if he's here at the start of the 2011 season.

He made 5 like I said on page 2. One carry he knocked on, one carry made 10 metres. And I counted 3 missed tackles. No idea where they got those stats from.

Compare Peacock's stats from the same game:

28 Carries (Fielden 3)
208 Metres (22m)
20 Tackles (37)

Fielden is not at the races big time and gets banged most times he takes it in. You could say he's been at the top a lot of years and maybe his body is a bit knackered, but so has Peacock and he seems to get better if anything! We were defending most of the game last Friday so maybe not the best game to compare stats as Leeds were on the front foot a lot more. I, like most here, really want to see him turn it around.

There was a point in the game when Fielden carried the ball up (1st half think) when he hit Peacock head on and broke the tackle and kept going. He made 10 meters then and did again in the second half.

There is no way he carried the ball 4-6 times and made 22 meters.

Having said that I think he runs in too upright at the moment and gets hit back a lot. Get his head down a bit and bust the first tackle and his confidence will soar.

He tackels at a high rate, plays a lot of game time, her lacks belief in his own go forward.

I think any coach who has a prop forward that makes just 3 carries in a big game really needs to question that players desire and commitment.

The only reason he made so many tackles is that the leeds forwards targetted him as a 'spot' player. Which is also probably the reason he ended up missing so many.

And now Roberts

Well they are the facts.