GREAT post from Diavolo Rosso and Wheatsheaf Arms (and all others):

we need a firm direction in the very near future:
we cannot assume the franchise is nailed on
the new ground is not ours and we are main tenant only as long as Pel will allow
we urgently need to grow

Re your last comments, WA, the club is both a business and astrong part of our emotions, expectations and lives. Therefore we expect business models and plans to be more obvious than, say, a retail outlet.

I keep on posting my concerns re Sale: I work very close to their current home and realise both the ambitions of Mr Kennedy and also the dismal way County have been treated by the rugby giant. Without rigorous leadership, Salford could become a poor and pitied relation in any future stadium share.

Are you new here? You just don't seem to get it...

Let me help you:
1 "Us fans deserve to know more about this."
2 "Does anyone even know what he/she does?? SACK HIM/HER!!"
3 "This is my lowest point in the __ years of supporting the club."
4 "I said from the start our squad was sh*te - Admire me for how right I was."
5 "What a performance, I knew that group of players had it in them."

A little more of the above, if you don't mind. We don't take kindly to your original tact.
*Naturally, point 5 is only to be used sparingly.

Whilst agreeing with a lot of what is said... I also think that we have to look at the fact that we haven't gone down the same path as the likes of Swinton. Our budgets have been poor... yet we are still talked about as being one of the best run clubs in the game.

I think considering all the negative facts... we still have a SL club. We can bang on about the new stadium on the horizon... that's going forward... but I doubt it would have happened without the work put in over the last few years.

How we have done it and who is directly responsible is probably difficult to answer due to the fact that the people who are at the club tend to muck in... is it ideal ?... not really... it's probably far from the ultimate professional set up... but something has been done right over that time.

Don't get me wrong... I've had some real gripes about things that have been done over the past, and still have... but the big picture says we are currently the 12th best rugby league club in the country (based on current league table)... agreed... it also says we could do things a lot better than we have... but all in all as a club from the foundations up it ain't too bad... it's when we look at the top of the pile with the playing and coaching side we have issues.

Some good posts here.

For me, putting aside any rumours and fine detail, the Club faces something that it's never faced since I started watching them twenty-four years ago. The die-hard fans are almost giving-up the ghost.

We have all rode the peaks and troughs of supporting a Club like Salford. A Club who has been mostly underwhelming since the seventies and the difference between then and now is the fact that fans are tired of watching the Club fail to realise its ambitions. We see most other SL sides progressing ten-fold very quickly at the moment and it makes us itchy and nervous about if we might ever see it happen to our beloved Club. We keep watching and waiting and all we see is the same level of mediocre on the pitch barring those frustrating glimpses of a team that we could really be. The lack of progress on the pitch is dictated by decisions made off it. The hiring of decent coaches, managers, trainers should be the most important choices made by the Club. These are the people who can mould what we have to push forward slowly to where we want to be. We could have the greatest players in the world but if they are not fit, trained badly, and managed poorly we wont be any good.

We don't have the luxury of having the best players in the world. Talented players, yes. Hard-working players, yes. With the right people behind them they could take us on to the next level.

If it wasn't for the new Stadium, I believe that Salford would very quickly disappear into the Championship, never to return. We may still do. The Stadium doesn't guarantee us anything, although I personally believe that it will be our 'get out of jail free' card come the end of the season. If that's the case, I really fear that the current competence of what goes on at the Club will mean we will be prime candidates for the drop out of SL, if not this time, then surely the next. There's no way even Salford fans could argue we deserve a place in the top flight if after 6 years in the SL in its current state, we show no, or very little progress on the pitch.

We are at a very complicated crossroads as a Club at the moment and we really need to pick the right road. Fans are at breaking point, Club seems to be imploding internally, and a lack of direction on the pitch. There needs to be changes. Not necessarily big ones, but the right ones and right now.

Great post DR, some real good points there.

It seems to me at present the football side of our organisation is in a real mess at present so who is to blame? How high up the chain do you cut, we at salford run on a tight budget and our bean counters do a marvelous job balancing our finances, we are expanding our development into new areas of the field so that's a good thing

The director of football must be the man who carrys the can regarding the football department The CE looks down apon high at the whole organisations.

I'm not saying ss must go, he has signed some quality but he has signed some errors, we will never know how good of a director of football he is till we get something to compare him too.

I've been trying to say more or less the same thing for ages, maybe not putting it quite as eloquently as that though!!

First class post!!

Good post by The Butcher. As a die hard fan myself for over 50 years I am finding it harder and harder to motivate myself to go to the games. I actually had more motivation when we were in the championship league.

While we may never be the best in super league I look at clubs like Castleford for instance who have come on in leaps and bounds over the last couple of season whereas we just havent changed at all. We may be a professional rugby club but I feel we are still being run as an amateur club. I cannot imagine he likes of Wigan, St Helens etc letting all what is going on behind the scenes at our club carry on without dealing with it quickly and finally.

I am not asking for miracles just a well run club with strong leadership so that people will know and understand that this sort of lack of professionalism will not be tolerated both from players coaches and office staff.

Sad but true. I'm one of them...

Has anyone read the franchise summary? WILL have avg crowds of 8,500 going to 12,000 - WILL be one of the top teams in super league within 3 years etc etc. All this from a man managing a mad house. Perhaps Salford have started to look so far into the future that they cannot see what is happening in front of them.

I've read post after post, paragraph after paragraph and point after point over the past few weeks on this forum. Everyone is finger pointing, analysing, over analysing where the club is failing to improve and my conclusion to the problem is very simple . . the club is underfunded to compete with the majority of SL clubs. All the talk about the wrong choice of coaches, when Salford had money and last won the league in 1976 Donald Duck could have coached that team to win the championship! Why did McRae win the Championship with Salford in 2008? He wasn't neccessarily the best coach he simply had the best squad of players in that league.

I've read the comparisons with Castleford but they have bigger gates than us and spend more on their playing squad. As for our squad I don't think the club has spent as much as some of the fans think compared to last year.

What this club lacks more than anything is new money from new investers. Our only hope for the future is if a wealthy knight in shining armour rides into the boardroom when were at Barton. Let's not forget this club has lived beyond it's means for many years because a few board members have bank rolled it. However, my guess is this charity hasn't been as forthcoming in the economic climate of the past three years.