This topic is at least a week old. Do keep up chaps.

I like your thinking generally about customer service, but, if all of ASDA's customers turned up in one two hour shopping period then they might just have a problem.

At a sporting event, or dare I say it a pop concert (showing my age I know) does everyone expect to be able to park next to the venue, then miraculously be able to drive away without a minutes delay? A 10-15 minute walk is acceptable and generally if there is a known problem then as a customer I also expect to work around it within reason

Of course not. People are (usually) reasonable in their expectations but they still expect their lives to be easy.

Salford, more so than some other clubs, desperately needs to attract new fans, new audiences and new customers (Koukash has been very public about that), so it is in their interests to make their venue as appealing as possible (esspecially in a leisure market that is as congested as Barton is). If a day / evening at the SCS is perceived to be too much of a hassle, neither Salford nor Sale will grow their crowds - those crowds will instead take their cash to the Trafford Centre, the local cinema or that big ski slope across the road.

Yes, there are lots of places to park nearby and lots of ways to buy tickets, but a large proportion of the people that Salford (presumably) want to attract aren't going to be inclined to look up local amateur RL clubs that might have a car park, or ticketing policies that are out of step with the majority of clubs.

The comparisons with supermarkets are a little clumsy but they are still valid. ASDA will design their car park based on the traffic patterns that they expect. They know what they are like at their busiest, and they are designed to cope. At the SCS, they know to expect several thousand supporters in a short period of time, so the car parking should be designed to cope much better than they currently are.

The purpose of comparing the two is to show that all of this 'excuse making' does Salford no favours. Businesses adapt, develop and invest based on the expectations of their customers. If there is a demand for people to pay for a ticket with cash, then that facility should really be provided. Salford, Sale and the SCS are too small to change consumer behaviour - it should be the consumers that change the behaviour of Salford, Sale and the SCS.

For clarity, I didn't totally disagree, but, perhaps part of Salford's access problems are in no small part to the 'success' of The Trafford Centre and its environs all that free parking attracting thousands of car journeys clogging up the M60? I would suggest that it is a location issue rather than a stadium management/club thing. if you drive to the stadium you haven't got rat runs to disperse traffic quickly the options are too limited.

I had the pleasure of visiting LSV last Sunday parked up and got away no problem. Admittedly the crowd was just over 2k and it was a Sunday and presumably many locals walked up but it can't be compared to Barton and the inherent infrastructure problems that that area has faced in recent years and that's the key together with the rest of the hinterland being a desert at the moment. if there was a restaurant or two and a ph on site then that would help as fans could be tempted to arrive early and leave later increasing the core traveltime easing the traffic flow.

Sure Salford need to address the match day experience but there is a finite extent to that control at the moment. such as cash turnstiles but beyond that it's difficult.

I'm not quite sure what Sale's gripe is, it is in the wrong part of town for their supporters and always was going to be especially on a Friday night and they would have known that

BTW if ASDA's car park is too busy get ready for another supermarket not more car parking at ASDA as some clever planning consultant will say that ASDA are over trading so there is a shortage of retail space. it doesn't quite work that way with sports clubs

I suspect the poor attendances for both clubs have much more to do with the poor quality of the teams on the pitch than anything else. In Sale's case I think they're doing pretty well to get 4 figure crowds to watch that ***te

In the last 6 years Salford have had only 2 home cup ties....in 2012 v Leeds it was 20% less than that seasons SL average, in 2011, v HKR it was 55% lower than that seasons average....I'm not surprised someone would be keen to use 'CUP" attendances to spin Salford in a positive light