Funny that every man and his dog from other Clubs seem to want to inform us exactly how we will fail unless we take the 'Ten Year improvement plan' approach. It's amazing that the so-called RL family seems so bitter when someone dares to want to be better. To be fair, quite a few have given encouragement but the majority seem to be armchair CEO's who know the ins and outs of off-field RL to the point that it seems to be a travesty they are not in charge of SL out right.

They seem to be completely informed of our finances, our cap, our youth set-up, and our community development to name a few. I've been kicking myself this evening thinking 'Why didn't we employ half of the VT dwellers to run our Club?'

I understand your point about the publicity, and I'm not sure about the old quote, "there is no such thing as bad publicity".

Thanks for the positive points: a very fair and even handed post. Regards. BD,

Yes, this idea that you need to stretch your improvement out over as long a period as possible in order to make it successful has struck me as being odd as well (even some of our fans seem to buy into it). Who would have thought making noises that you want to buy the best players available, spend the full salary cap and get better as quickly as possible could be so bad for your club.

I'm loving the fact that league is getting some proper Investment. We need more people like the doc getting involved In our great game.

We've now got Warrington, Wigan, Leeds, Hull, and now Salford all capable of spending money in the transfer market. It's great, and will make for increased competition no doubt.
Only problem now is the likely scramble between all those clubs for the best players in SL and any stragglers from Aus.

I wouldn't be surprised if you signed Danny Tickle next season, OOC at Hull and is very keen to move back to Lancashire to be nearer his family.

Be a very good signing for you and a loss for Hull, also expect you to sign Hock so a backrow of him and Tickle would be a good start.

Not good for the game IMO. What ever happened to SL clubs been self-financing ? If men like Moran, Whelan and the good Dr decide to leave further down the line where does it leave those clubs ?

Difficult one. In theory I agree but there are very few top sports clubs that don't make losses and/or are reliant on wealthy benefactor. Ideally you need additional income streams. external income at the willows in the 80s and 90s kept salford stable but once that started to dry up and then we moved to the new ground and the external income went wilkinson had to dig deeper until he ran out of money. Unless you're a Mansour or an Abrmovich you can only lose a few hundred grand a year for so long.

Hopefully Koukash's plans for owning part of the stadium and the surrounding land come through and that will provide the extra revenue needed for the club to be sustainable (along with increased fans and revenue from the sports side too). That is his intention and he has stated that he wants the club to become self-financing. Time will tell whether he can deliver this

I read recently that the benefactor at Cas has over a period given your club 3 million in loans of which I'd be very surprised if he ever got his money back. There is a very similar situation at most clubs, Huddersfield and London are two other teams that spring to mind.

I think two areas that haven't helped is the failure to only get a 3.8% increase in TV money from Sky since 1996 and the Superleague not being able to attract decent sponsors.

Clubs self-financing - when did this ever happen?

If you consider what Sky were paying in TV revenue back in 1996 and put that figure in an historical inflation calculator and compare it with what sky are paying today there is an 8.1 million a year shortfall.

Koukash seems keen to give the club good foundations. There's talk of developments on the land around the stadium (hotel, casino, private hospital, water park have all been mentioned) to generate revenue for the club and, over time, to make the club not need Koukash's money.

I think the building of a big house on sand isn't a good idea.There are examples - Blackburn Rovers,in soccer,had 1 year of success on the money from Jack Walker - but that,as far as I can recall,was the limit.
Bradford Bulls won lots from the start of the summer era for about 5/6 years,then they struggled on the field until the problems off the field,as well documented,last year.
Leeds,in the 80's,hired a number of highly rated coaches,spent lots of cash on highly rated players,won nowt and when Caddick and Hetherington took over,were seriously in debt.
Wigan after their success in the 80's and early 90's not only saw them move stadium to share with a soccer club but the disgraceful treatment of the late Mike Gregory was something unforgiveable.

Getting improvement and remaining successful for as long as possible has to be the target.Reaching the top immediately and burning out even quicker ain't the best plan.Managing expectations may be the problem now.

What a lovely problem to have. I didn't see that one coming when I was sitting at Pendleton Church.