If Salford suddenly have more cash to splash then there's no reason why Sheens couldn't make a difference - at least in turning them into a more competitive side. Salford are hardly going to keep their current squad if Sheens is brought in, are they?

Not wishing to boast or anything....

The level of players Koukash has been targetting are simply not going to be released mid-season. Even if they were, there's a limit to how many he can sign and stay within the salary cap/overseas quota.

Whoever comes in as coach is going to have to face up to being short of quality for the rest of 2013 and building again for 2014. It needs to be someone who can spell out to Koukash that Rome wasn't build in a day and that getting Salford to a position where they can compete with the top clubs is a long term job.

Koukash is now saying he wants the salary capped raised, I assume so he can go buy the Australian test team.
Yes lets go back to the days of the wealthy clubs like Wigan in the 80's who put 50 points past everybody week in week out and won the Challenge cup every year as theyt bought all the best available players and were fulltime.
I can only see this guy harming Super league if he gets his way being a pal of Nigel Woods.

It doesn’t need to be so extreme.

Salford, and SL would benefit from some more of the better players in Rugby playing in our League. I cant see what problem people could have with the buzz he would create by signing a big name. I think it is wrong that we put ourselves out of the market for most of the best players in the world.

There can be a middle way.

What would be the problem with having an SC of £1m and 5 marquee players off cap?

Mainly that most of those marquee players would be at 6 and 7 which would be a nightmare for England selection, and a lot of clubs couldn't support that level of spending. Imagine what happens when Wire, Wigan, Leeds and maybe Saints and Hull can just automatically hoover up the best of the available key players (think full back, halfbacks, hooker and the rocking-horse-poop that are quality centres) because they can pay far more than everyone else. The league would be getting more uncompetitive.

Leeds generated a huge buzz over the 2004-2012 period (ongoing really) based on home-grown players in most of those positions.

Agree. Seems reasonable to suppose that they've got a bit of cap space at the moment, so they might be able to bring people in, but the big teams are not going to de-stabilise their seasons by releasing star players, because the cap doesn't contain enough money to make that worth their while by paying a huge transfer fee.

Which player has created as much buzz, home grown or not, as Ali Lauitiiti did in 2004? Or Buderus? Or Webb?

There is the other side of things which whilst a team could spend big on bringing in 5 top top quality players and If we took your example even to the extreme and Leeds signed Inglis, Thurston, Cronk, Smith and Hodges, they would still need to sign 20 other players on an average of only £50k a player.

Or to make things a bit more flexible, keep the cap at £1.6m and have the option of up to 5 marquee players whose cap value is capped at £120k.

Koukash has been in the game 5 minutes and he presumes, because of his wealth, to offer an opinion on something as important to the sport as the salary cap.

When will he do a Whelan and threaten to throw his very expensive teddies out of the pram if he doesn't get his way?

Build something Mr Koukash, don't buy it. Rather than spend a fortune on Ausrtalian test players fund some development officers in the Manchester area. Hire a a proper, well paid marketing manager and give him a budget, fund schools and amateur clubs in the area. Build a foundation that can make Salford a real force in machester for the long term.

Spot on he'll need to spend a bit on players short term so that they don't get hammered every week, but the top players aren't going to move there just because he's there. Even if he paid Tomkins another 1-200k a year is it actually worth it to Tomkins to move away from a club able to win things and move himself out of the spotlight in terms of NRL or Union.
As you say his biggest contribution to Salford and RL in general will be in his spending off the field.

Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I think there is a good argument to say that having development officers in an apathetic area isn’t going to make the difference it could. There is sense in Dr Koukash using big names as part of the strategy to break-through and follow that up,

Who is going to inspire the kids in Salford and Manchester to take up RL more? Mick the development officer or SBW?

With regards to marketing, you have to have something to sell. Spending a million pounds now on marketing the club right now would probably be a waste of money, They might get some new people to attend but such a rubbish squad getting 30 points put on them will probably leave the vast majority of new attendee’s dismissing them as the ‘same old salford’.

Lets face it, Leeds have never been afraid of a big name, and whilst our recent success has been built on some top quality youngsters being brought through, we have gone out and added some pretty big names like Ali Lauitiiti, Danny Buderus, Chris McKenna, Marcus Bai, Brent Webb and bought in some of the top british players like Jamie Peacock and Gareth Ellis

All of whom were prepared to move a big club. Salford aren't a big club yet. They need some average signings first to get the ball rolling and then hopefully get a couple of reasonable names for next season. In the mean time, the structures off the field are far more important. If the area is as apathetic as you suggest then getting SBW in wont help because they won't know who he is, and he won't come anyway. But Mick the development officer who you dismissed so quickly, could have plenty of success in enticing kids to have some fun and play something other than football.

Why?

Why do Salford need to go from rubbish to average to good? Why cant they just go from rubbish to good? What is this extra step gaining them?

Im not dismissing Mick the development officer, but when he is talking to kids and trying to inspire them he wont be using Darrell Griffin as that inspiration. No kid grows up wanting to be a middling prop doing the grunt-work, hell even a middling prop doing the grunt-work doesn’t want to be that. The same as kids grow up wanting to be Wayne Rooney rather than Kevin Davies, kids in RL want to imagine themselves being Benji Marshall, not Darrell Griffin.

It is wrong to say that high-profile signings, in and of themselves, cannot be part of a long term strategy and it is fundamentally wrong to assume that Salford are automatically more sustainable by spending less on wages. Salford spending £1m on wages in front of 2k fans may be less profitable and as such less sustainable than Salford spending £3m on wages in front of 8k fans.

The reason is that the top players won't come to this country let alone to a side with no prospects. You have to try and build your squad up incrementally, so that players being targetted could see the potential of what you are trying to build. You need to get to a place where you are a middling team, but with potential to go to the next level, so that the big players can buy into the vision

They will if you give them money.