Taylor inherited a raft of salary cap issues when he took the reins and those problems have been exacerbated by a spate of injuries this season. Taylor has had to blood Josh Addo-Carr, Josh Aloiai and JJ Felise, while back-up recruits Joel Edwards, Jack Littlejohn and Jordan Rankin have made their first-grade debuts. Facing a familar foe: Wests Tigers coach Jason Taylor will square off against the Rabbitohs. Credit:Ben Rushton The granting of early releases to Jesse Parahi and Lamar Manuel-Liolevave has consequences to the club's second-tier balance sheet. The lack of depth has been further exposed by an ankle injury to captain Aaron Woods, while Matt Ballin's knee injury has prevented him from playing since shifting from Manly. The issues mean Taylor has little scope to drop underperforming players. Taylor said his team was still smarting from the Raiders hiding. "They have been hurting, big-time," Taylor said. "The group has been hurting for a number of weeks now and that's the hardest part about it. We've been really close in all of our games this season, particularly the ones we've lost, to playing our best footy.

"Then last week we had an aberration, that was a performance that just wasn't good enough. We let everybody down who is involved in our club, we let our fans down too, which is disappointing. Rare bright spot: Chris Lawrence is congratulated by Tigers teammates after scoring a try during the match against Canberra. Credit:Stefan Postles "One game doesn't make a season and eight games don't make a season. It's one really poor performance - at this point that's all it is. We get a chance to bounce back." Taylor knows he is under pressure as his side sits above only the Knights and Roosters on the ladder. "It's part of the game, it's part of this job and it's part of a lot of jobs in the world today," he said. "I'm fine because what I know is what matters is our performance. How things have gone this week is based on the fact that we played really poorly and it wasn't good enough. That's what comes on the back of that sort of performance.

"It's up to us, we control the pressure by performing better. If we don't perform better the pressure will remain or it will increase. If we do it will go away. We're in charge of that as a club, we're in charge of that as a team and we're the ones who can do something about it." Loading Taylor brushed off suggestions his team were no longer playing for him. "It's clear to see that the performances this season have been full of great character," he said. "It was only six days prior to the Canberra game that we took the Melbourne Storm into extra time and played a really strong game. That stuff comes on the back of one poor performance, I find that stuff disappointing ... "You're not happy when you're sitting in the coach's box and you see the team performing poorly but it's not due to what I'll receive from the fans and the media, it's because you're disappointed in your own performance. We have absolute pride in our performance and that wasn't good enough last week."