This is indeed potentially the beginning of the end for a once great Club that I have supported for over 40 years and yet realistically if it isn't viable then like any other business it has to pay the consequences.

Much has been written on this forum about the Chairman, what he has and has not done, what mistakes he has made etc... one thing for certain though is he will not have wanted the Club to have ended up financially striken as it is now.

My last balance sheet 12 months ago for the 2010 year showed yet another loss (£400k if I remember correctly) and that John Wilkinson was in overall for almost £5 million. The basic fact is that without his funding the Club would have reached this financial meltdown a lot quicker than it has. There were of course the benefits at the Willows of the Variety Centre & Bars to subsidise this and this is now the crux of the issue, those revenue streams are no longer there, no longer providing an income with which the Club can be subsidised, our cash cow of the last 30 years can no longer be relied on.

John Wilkinson has certainly not got everything right in his 30 year tenure but he has kept the Club in existence so for that we must be thankful, it is therefore all the more calamatous that these funds have dried up in mid. recession both for us and for John as his monies which he was ultimately expecting to recover will to be gone for good when the Club is wound up in January.

I won't hold my breath waiting for the RFL to fornicate over us as they did Bradford, I am sure they can't wait for us to disappear off the radar and be replaced by another Yorkshire Club in Featherstone who they will doubtless bankroll as they have London for more years than I care to remember.

The future looks bleak and of course we can't even fall back on The Willows, it lies demolished, rather like our Clubs future dreams.

We have for many years shook our heads and tut utted at the likes of London, Bradford, Widnes, Swinton et al, all who have gone to the wall leaving a trail of unpaid debts behind them only to rise phoenix like from the ashes. Is it our turn now? Only time will tell but I won't be holding my breath!

Only just learned of this from reading this forum.
Dunno who you are Butcher but thanks for the post - reminded me of -

[iThe ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. [/iMartin Luther King, Jr.

Really feel for the coaching staff and the players et al. - and their loved ones.

I am not claiming for a second that the club has been well run, but I do think the City Council have let us down badly.

Under pressure from the RFL to invest in new stadia, rugby league clubs have chased this Holy Grail instead of developing existing grounds. The recession has hit all such clubs in different ways. Salford seem to have suffered more than most as plans were altered and scaled down, and we seem to have cut ourselves off from previous income streams. New owners and new management structures and systems were needed to rectify this.

So, the local council becomes involved ( along with Peel Holdings if reports are correct ) and months are spent negotiating a "Rescue Package". Yet now it seems the Council's representatives were empowered to negotiate but not empowered to deliver what they were negotiating. What sort of system is that? If it is true that we already have a £1.5M loan from the Council, how was that arranged? Did that go to a Council vote? I have no idea as I do not remember any details of this loan being made public. Have the goal posts been shifted?

So for the sake of £750,000 the Council leads us up the garden path. Rough calculations suggest this is about 5p per week for every Salford resident. In that context it does not seem a massive amount. I feel badly let down by negotiations which seem to have been taking place with a determination to succeed and yet now we realise that they never had a chance. Shame on the Council for their actions.

Salford City Reds must not be allowed to disappear.

Martyn Sadler has tweeted - Salford Council have already loaned £1.5 million to the City Reds, so if they go into admin or liquidation the Council will lose that money

Who was it who said 'keep politics out of sport ' ?

Michigan you have still not told us who the morons are,then it is no and bottle,you had lot to say regarding
Mrs Garrido that should not be permitted on here,has I say I don't agree with here polotics and I have never met
the lady.I if somebody had said that about your mother,I don't thnk you would have liked It,would you.
The council should be saveing sevices,not Salford Reds,I have also said Mr Wilkinson is a good bloke but in my
opinion he put the wrong people in charge,and for to long.Mr Wilkinson told us only last season that people would
come to the new stadium just because we had one,a five year old new that was not going to happen.
So have your opinion,you are entiled to it,and so are the morons so please tell us who they are,
but remember we are all hurting because we are all Salford supporters who ever runs the club.

I can understand the depression and the anger, but in the end money in has to equal money out.

We call it professional sport, but in reality the only thing about sport that is professional is that the players get paid.

1 or 2 sporting clubs turn a profit and there will always be exceptions to every rule. But there are very few business' that will spend more money on staff than they receive from customers in revenue. Sporting clubs are at the whims of 2 masters, money and the race up the sporting ladder of success. In the end no one person or institution has caused this disaster, just a long drawn out process of revenue being less than costs. If the council ploughed in more money and peel did the same, this would not increase revenues, but just give a stay of execution until the next time or until a new investor (person to loan from) could be found.

I only have to look at my own club to realise that without loans we too would be in the same place as Salford. As would 90% of all sporting clubs.