www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 2yxzx.html Is he having a laugh? Or has his money given him delusions of grandeur? Why would SBW want to come to Salford when Sydney Roosters can offer him equal money and he will be close to his family? Why would Billy Slater want to leave Melbourne (average home crowd 16,000) for Salford (average home crowd 4,000)? By contrast London, if it had a decent coach and CEO, and a decent set of players, would be an attractive option for NRL superstars.

www.smh.com.au/rugby-league/leag ... 2yxzx.html Is he having a laugh? Or has his money given him delusions of grandeur? Why would SBW want to come to Salford when Sydney Roosters can offer him equal money and he will be close to his family? Why would Billy Slater want to leave Melbourne (average home crowd 16,000) for Salford (average home crowd 4,000)? By contrast London, if it had a decent coach and CEO, and a decent set of players, would be an attractive option for NRL superstars.

He can want all he likes, it won't make it happen.

This season will be a wake up call for him that he can't buy success on or off the field unfortunately.

I did however chuckle at his tweet about having Brian Noble and Rangi Chase castrated......

if the clubs do the right thing and step aside and don't object to having a marquee allowance he could well sign them. Sonny Bill Williams is a brand these days and he wants to spread it as much as possible Australia, France, New zealand, japan so why not England? Manchester on his kind of money would be a a good year or two experience.

I'd love a marquee allowance, I'd lick my lips about who would be on Tony Smith/Simon Morans wish list.

go on then who do you think?

for Wigan i would probably say bret morris.

This is a serious debate actually. If a marquee allowance was something that a club had to apply to the RFL for then finances could be scrutinised before being approved? This means there would be no club going bust because of it.

There is little doubt that only a handful of clubs would be able to afford it. However, there is also little doubt that players like Billy Slater, SBW, Cameron Smith, Paul Gallen, Benji Marshall, Jamie Lyon etc. would look at a pay day (particularly if they were winding representative careers up).

We finished bottom last year, most realistic predictions for next season would put us somewhere between 6-9. How can that not be a vindication of his investment or 'buying success' as you call it? Koukash knows full well that we are now where near the finished product and he has stated at several supporters meetings that he has assembled the best squad that was available during the course of last season. That would seem a fair assessment of the situation. Not world beating signings but a definite improvement on 2013 with some really exciting players in there.

Whether our performance next season will match the expectations he has set for the club and Noble is a different question. I think Koukash will view 6th as the bottom limit of his ambition next year, where as most fans and probably Noble would snap your hand off now to finish 6th. There is nothing wrong with high ambition but he does need to be realistic.

I never understand when people say you can't buy success, when as sport has shown time and time again, nothing is more likely to guarantee success than money. It's generally just a question of when and not if.

Realistically I reckon Robbie Farah

Would that be using the same impeccable method that saw Crusaders, London, Wakefield, Salford and Bradford all awarded SL licences?

Thats a fair shout.

This story broke during the world cup while he (Dr Koukash) was at the Melbourne cup. Nice one being fast out the tracks JC.

You can buy improvement, and you can buy short term success, but you can't buy prolonged time at the top, it's takes long hard work to grind out the things needed to stay at the very top, and money is no replacement for that.

The most obvious example is the Manchester football clubs. Man City have spent ridiculous amounts of money chasing success, and arguably not very successfully, but have won a premiership which they couldn't dream of before. But are they as successful as united? Not even close, city are at the start of the very long path to build a club capable of sustaining the level of success that was achieved by United, with the things like the training facility's and the youth development etc but they have a long way to go. Whether they achieve that or not no one can say.

Personally, I don't like koukash, I admire his ambition and think he's great for Salford, but, he's only chasing the stars, the names that will get him in the papers, I get the feels half the signings they made this season wouldn't of happens if noble hadn't had to remind him you need to build a team, and I think that obsession with star names will be the undoing.

Given the squad you had, with 2 highly rated young halfbacks, in Fages and Sneyd, it provided the perfect opportunity to build a successful team around them, recognising success doesn't come over night and letting the 2 halfbacks grow and succeed with the club, as Richie Myler has done with Warrington (and Salford should be looking at the Warrington example of sustaining growth in my opinion) - instead koukash throws his cash around and signs two "names" because he can with no long term thought

Whether he gets the two people above or not, or any other lot of "names" until a cohesive long term plan is in place, I can't see Salford having any long period of success.

Regardless of future marquee signing rules, if SBW goes and plays Union with an eye on the All Blacks, once he's finished Koukash could offer whatever he likes seeing as there is dispensation for players coming from Union under current cap rules.

As for Slater, I could see him being tempted in a year or two especially as his second love is horse racing.

Chelsea are the argument to the above analogy as they have spent big and are now a decade into their existence as a big club with no sign of it abating. Maybe, just maybe (fingers crossed, painfully with arthritis) he (Koukash) may stick around for the foreseeable future and help the club grow to a stature they have never had before.

Sigh, no he can't, the rules for special dispensation state

Since sbw has played rl before he doesn't qualify and hence will be subject to the salary cap, just as for example, if saints signed Kyle eastmond