It's a bit harsh to describe winning the Challenge Cup as 'treading water'. It's a big achievement to win a Challenge Cup, even if the team has done it before. We went 35 years without winning one.

However I do agree with your general point. For me the statistic that illustrates it is doing a before-and-after comparison over an equivalent time period. Since Steve Price has been coach we've played 62 SL games (including playoffs/GF). If you compare those to the last 62 games under Tony Smith you get:

Price P 62 W 35 D 1 L 26 F 1510 A 1133
Smith P 62 W 38 D 3 L 21 F 1590 A 1258

The points against column looks better. You also have to take in to account the fact that 4 of those games under TS came in the 'qualifiers' against Championship teams.

However the improvement overall over that time period has been pretty small. Considering that this comparison period was the time when it was generally felt that the TS era had gone stale and we were in need of a change, it is disappointing.

It doesn't feel like we have moved forwards. I haven't gone through the St Helens record but I bet you would see a much starker contrast between the before and after periods for when Justin Holbrook took over.

If we had kept TS would anyone have been really surprised if we'd recorded the results that we got over the past two years...made a couple of finals and lost them, then got a win again at Wembley but bombed out of the playoffs. The discussion on here would have been yes TS has won Challenge Cups but he's not the man to take us to the next level and win the Grand Final, recruitment has been poor, the rugby is boring. Basically we are still having that discussion but we have changed the name TS for Steve Price.