Quote Wires71="Wires71"Big issue for Wire in my opinion. Ageing side, maybe the oldest in the league on average, makes me think it's this year for an SL crown or we wait a few more years at least (assuming Smith stays).'"
All depends who we sign. Remember most of the ageing players are ones who will be on big contracts so we should be able to enter the market for high quality players. There are enough younger players to give a fair bit of continuity, the real issue for me is not that we are ageing en masse but at a rough estimate, our four best players are M Monaghan, Briers, Morley and Hodgson. Probably all of these players will go in the next 2 years. So that means we need to sign four very good players.
I am not overly pessimistic about 'now or never' in regards winning SL this season, as we are not alone in being in a state of transition, Leeds are in a similar boat to us, Saints have been through it over the past few seasons, Wigan are best placed but now have the uncertainty of the coaching situation. If we keep TS we still have the best coach in the league and he turned around a side which was an absolute crock in early 2009 under Jimmy Lowes, in a very short space of time. I reckon if you put TS in charge of a mid table side, and gave him enough room in the salary cap to sign four quality players, he would be able to build a competitive side very quickly. And thats where I reckon we are - if you took those four players above out of our team I reckon we would be about 6th in the league. We signed King, Monaghan, Hicks and Louis Anderson in one go....if we have another off season signing players of that calibre then we will be able to have another strong team, even if there is a settling in period.
The make or break will be who we sign to replace Briers. We absolutely have to sign a top player for that position. I wish Kimmorley was a bit younger, I'd have loved him at Wire.
