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Saints are missing some 'Grunt' in the forwards, Roby has been heroic in his efforts but injury to him has left St.Helens vulnerable.
They have some of the best youngsters coming through of any club, of any sport, but they are missing the 'Big Men' which win the arm wrestle, which in turn will allow this next generation to flourish.
George can I also add, I've never seen the amount of young players coming through in Rugby League in my 40 years, as there is now, well done to all academies in RL.

Only one team in Super League, THE LEEDS RHINOS

It all goes in cycles, if Saints think they are struggling, look at the Bulls.
Burrow and Maguire at Leeds aren't oldies yet, but it won't be long. Peacock and Sinfield have only a couple of seasons left in them...when you get injured at that age you don't come back quickly.

Looks to me like Warrington and Wigan are the up and coming teams.

Saints we're excellent in the first half against Catalan. If anything we got too far ahead and took our foot off the pedal. Since then Roby has got injured and confidence has dipped. Also Hohaio hasn't found his form yet.

I think we also have to give credit to the overall levelling of standards in the superleague. Widnes beat Wigan!!

However, that said, i am very confident that this young team will find their feet soon & we'll be there or thereabouts at the end of season. Also maybe Sean could remind us of the Saints v Salford score a few weeks ago.....

It's clear after seeing James Grahams man of the match performance for the Bulldogs that they haven't replaced his numbers which were always among the top forward stats in Super League. Against a big Catalan forward pack they really struggled in the second half as they just had no answer to the French sides go forward. It is worth remembering though they have major players out injured so no doubt will be in the eight at the end of the season.

Good article this. Saints will come good. we've been unlucky really. The Season has only just started. We were in a similar position last year and so were Leeds. We ended up fighting it out in the Grand Final. As it says in the piece, write Saints off at your peril. We win most of our trophies as underdogs. Come on you Saints!!!

Having been to all this seasons home games the side seems to lack direction which I suspect is down largely to Grahams departure. He provided the direction in defence and led by example. Nobody seems capable of taking on these responsibilities.

Another thought is the change in interchanges and Simmons obsession with having a back on the bench and whether this is hindering the side as we have only 16 players in effect!

With the big 3 coming up in rapid succession I don't see things improving in the short term unless Simmons can pull a rabbit out the hat. Better look towards the cup and hope to gain a decent enough position to allow progression in the play-offs. Top 4 I don't see but then I guess many Rhinos would not have predicted last seasons finally half way through.

i can't believe your saying warrington are one of the up and coming teams when they have more +30 players than anyone ther were 10 in the team that played leeds and 3 injured.st.helens are still a very good side and will come good,they just haven't the x factor anymore.

Good article, George, and reflects the alarm felt by a lot of Saints fans not so much because of the lack of wins - a draw and two extremely narrow defeats as well as the Hull loss - but by the manner of the losses. We have given away an incredible number of points when on almost each occasion we have had commanding leads. Bar against Hull when we started with an individual error and went downhill from there, we appear to have suffered a crisis in the second half which has seen us undo all the good work of the previous half. While I do agree with Longy that Saints are playing pretty one dimensional rugby at present, what I don't think he allows for in this article is that we have two very inexperienced halves and have lost some significant players recently. Neither of our halves has yet to play a full season at first grade in their respective positions. Therefore, overly complex plays or asking them to be too spontaneous in order to dig us out of a hole is expecting too much of them at this stage in their careers IMO. I rather think that Scully has hit the nail on the head because against Hull KR, Catalans and Huddersfield we were in the lead, sometimes a commanding lead, but errors occurred, penalties were given away and then defensively we were tosh, both individually and as a group, and the game was lost.

We do miss a leader though, and badly. We have definitely been missing James Graham, on and off the field, and I can't see how we are going to overcome his absence with the current crop of players, but as a Saints fan I suppose I have to keep on hoping that we will!

Saints will be back - good article - but misses the point the SL has leveled out (mostly) nicely !