Its not individuals though, its the team as a whole. There are some pretty fundamental things which are just poor, meaning we have no foundation. The lack of structure, which looked wonderful in 2022 as it freed players from the Agar shackles of dullness, is just ebbing confidence. This is the same as last year, as there is nothing to fall back on when the going gets tough. Everyone ends up looking for someone else for miracle plays, and the wrong players start making decisions, generally bad ones.

Add this to a pack lacking in punch both yardage and defence - which is where a lot of our problems start - and a stratospheric dumb error count, and it really is a hot steaming mess.

I cannot see how Smith shouldn't be judged really quite harshly now. We're about a third of the way through the season and look worse than at the start. We've also got a worse record after 9 games than last season, which included a win at Sts. The problem isn't new players learning each other's play, its the basic stuff that any team, even average ones, need to be able to do.

I thought Smith's press conference was better today, mainly because he was being asked some of the questions they seem to have been avoiding. I'm not sure why none of them push back on his comments when he suggests a poor performance was good/acceptable though.

The issues with a new coach are very valid. It would be far better if Smith can turn things around. But some of these opportunities to reboot things need to be taken. Huddersfield was a chance after a 2-week turnaround, Hull was a chance because they're a really poor team, London is chance because they are a Championship team in SL. After this we play some decent teams in consecutive weeks. Another sloppy win against London followed by two defeats - potentially big ones - would really leave us in the mire almost halfway through the season.

I imagine it's more likely they will beat London, possibly less convincingly than might be expected, and then come up with a pair of creditable performances after that. Assuming the team has a few players back from injury anyway.

It's not a unique phenomenon but Smith's teams really do perform much better when they are underdogs.

He got soft-soaped on that presser for the large majority of it.

He really needs putting under some better scrutiny because some of those answers were giving off major "Jesse Marsch Vibes"
This is RL and I suppose you dont want to be blacklisted from stuff I suppose but I found myself shaking my head at some of the "answers" he put forth to questions.

The nature of being underdogs is that you generally need to be not winning and playing poorly to get the moniker.