Just being realistic Arthur.
The table doesn't lie.
And looking at how recruitment is going, I expect much the same next year.
Eseh will go to Saints. Why wouldn't he?

I'm not a season ticket holder, but I go to about 10 games a season.
Haven't really enjoyed any this year (apart from maybe Hudds at home)
So I probably won't go next year.
The club will survive without my money, but I doubt I'm alone with my sentiments.

Next season is different. It’s highly unlikely we’ll lose both starting half backs and starting full back, centre, prop and marquee forward all at the same time again.

We don’t know the relative quality of our 2024 squad compared to 2023 but we have clearly had huge disruption through injuries and weird departures and fall outs.

A few more smart signings and I think we should be reasonably confident of a top 6 finish next season. If we don’t get the next few signings right then yes we might struggle again.

I believe we have a clutch of future first team players coming through the system now: who knows which will make it but some will be knocking on the door even next year.

I admire your optimism, unfortunately I don’t share it. We are in a mess ,sadly this situation hasn’t come about overnight, we have been in a downward spiral for several years. Several posters on here have highlighted this situation, unfortunately they were accused of not supporting the club so by and large the downward trajectory continued. I have always supported Hethrington but it’s time for him to step down and a competent director of rugby appointed.

I think you're being overly pessimistic. Four, maybe more, signings of the right quality could make a huge difference. I wouldn’t get too hung up on Eseh. He's a good young prop but we are well stocked in that regard. I'd much rather have a proven senior prop, and as referenced at yesterday's presser announcements could be fairly immenent. I'll see what they come up with before writing them off as a bad job. Hopefully they do get it right, the team is competitive again, and you get tempted back to going to games again.

I’m just going on Friday to enjoy Headingley and a game and spend some time with the boy. It’s great if we win but that isn’t the main reason to attend for me.

Don’t get me wrong it puts a downer on my weekend if we lose but the club is overall sound - I do think GH’s time over the rugby operations might have overrun by 5 years but we have lots of good players and support staff.

It might not look like it after shaky performances this season but I do think we’re going in the right direction overall.

Heavy caveat to this: if we make 3-4 good quality signings now.

The problem with the likes of Wakey and Cas is the salary cap money is spent on ground staff and admin staff not on players. Time to introduce a minimum spend on the playing squad - if you can't spend to that limit then move over.

I agree I would probably go as far as to say the cap HAS to be spent and on the playing squad only, I wouldn't bother with a minimum requirement.

If you don't have a minimum doesn't that have the same effect?

One thing's for sure, we rally need IMG to magic up some extra money for the game as a whole.

What I mean is the clubs would have to spend whatever the cap is i.e the caps minimum is also the maximum

You could certainly do a window of £2.6-3.0m

Or get rid of the cap altogether but maybe still have an audit regime to avoid clubs going bust…

Bottom line is we do need more money in the game and that has always been the hurdle.