The speculation surrounding Newcastle Knights coach Adam O'Brien is growing louder after yet another loss on Sunday, this time to the Canterbury Bulldogs.
The loss is the Knights' fourth in a row, and sixth out of their last seven games, with the only win in that period coming over the Gold Coast Titans at home.
The run of poor form has left the Knights sitting just four points clear of the last-placed Titans with only 5 wins from 19 games this season.
Despite that - and the calls for O'Brien to leave his post growing louder - the coach used his post-match press conference on Sunday afternoon following a 24 points to 10 loss to the Canterbury Bulldogs to suggest he has the skills to coach his team out of the slump, but that it will take time.
“It is a hard one for me as well,” O’Brien said.
“Previous to getting this job here I was involved in four grand finals.
“I know how those teams prepared. I know the systems they used defensively.
“You don’t unlearn that knowledge. Applying it and getting it ingrained is going to take some time clearly.
“Week to week we can talk about one area of that defence and we can fix it in seven days, but then we will let another area of our defence down.
“It is going to take a bit of time and I know some people don’t want to wait that long, but it is.”
O'Brien said he believes the club have the right people, but that it would take a lot of coaching to get them firing, while scraping into the finals this year would have been a negative for the future of the Knights.
“I have seen how the teams prepare in those four grand finals,” O’Brien said.
“How the players performed. How the club prepares. How it performs.
“I have seen all that stuff and I haven’t unlearnt that, but it is going to take some time.
“We have got the right people in the job. We just need to have a plan and we need to coach the hell out of it and hopefully we look back at this season as a year that helped us grow.
“Had we scraped into the finals this year it would have stuck a band-aid on a problem that is still there."
O'Brien was forced to watch on as his team let former Knight Jacob Kiraz score a hat-trick on the wing, while Kalyn Ponga also sat on the sideline.
The coach said the club did however make the right call at the time letting Kiraz go.
"He had a really good day. You're going to have ones who come back and hurt you," O'Brien said.
"At the time, Edrick (Lee) was coming good with that foot. We'd invested a fair sum in him and he didn't have a spot in the team.
"Anyone put in that situation back then would probably have wanted to fit Edrick in the team.
"If I'm really honest, I didn't foresee him jumping to the levels he has this quickly. I didn't spot that.
"But good luck to Kiraz. There's no sour grapes on that."
The Knights will take on the Wests Tigers at Campbelltown next week, with the joint venture coming off a shock away win over the Brisbane Broncos.
