I agree. I'm really looking forward to the return of the Red Devils and will be really ed off if the logo looks tacky/amateurish.

Or Salford is dropped from it, like I'm led to believe.

I can live with Salford not being displayed on the logo as long as it looks professional.

The logo will be tacky to some of us no matter what is decided... opinions always differ.

Let's reserve judgement.

However, to remove Salford and simply call us The Red Devils is sure to cause brand confusion with our Old Trafford neighbours. A businessman of the good Doctor's knowledge will surely avoid that.

If the current parochial mentality persists Salford will end up like Huddersfield as suggested with a good team, crowds of 5,500 and an owner berating the local population for not being supportive enough. Huddersfield probably has a smaller catchment area and its last previous period of success was well before Salford's last but they along with Town are undisputedly the local sporting focal points. Salford will be forever hobbled by the fact that they are in the backyard of one behemoth called United and in close proximity of another potential behemoth called City. The modern city of Salford has a far less robust and defined sense of itself than the previous incarnation and a significant majority will not have the slightest idea who the ‘pride of the city’ (?) is. The support of the two football giants just exacerbates an already pretty fractured and fluid local identity – Salford is not a St Helens, Wigan or Warrington and i simply cannot ever see the Salford ever attracting the kind of the numbers these teams are capable of. Salford somehow, without major name changes and betraying their past, need to market themselves as Manchester’s premier RL team. An anathema to many perhaps but regular crowds of 8,000 paying punters delivered out of the immediate Salford area are years away if achievable at all.
Many of course might be happy with 5,500 but i doubt if Dr Koukash will be.

Is there any evidence in UK sport (or wider for that matter) that simply a name change is some kind of panacea?*


* Beyond 19th century name changes such as Newton Heath Loco ->MUFC

Fulham changed their name to London, and the rest is history!

And how on earth will they then make up the 2000 or so fans that won't turn up to watch a Manchester team? Branding ourselves as a Manchester will have the opposite effect, crowds will drop.

I think you probably over-estimate the amount of people who care enough not to turn up.

Maybe - But do you honestly think that as rebranding ourselves as a Manchester it will have a positive effect on crowds? It just will not happen, people are not going to travel from places like Moston, Collyhurst, Hulme ect to come and watch a Manchester team play in the City of Salford. We cannot get rid of the Salford name, even not adding the Manchester and just marketing as the Red Devils is ludicrous totally throws any sort of identity away.

Using my particular Matchday group as a sample, me and my little lad would probably still go to games (although I'm not in favour of dropping Salford) but my dad and my uncle almost certainly wouldn't.

Stretching my point somewhat, I can't see any of my uncles or cousins on the other side of the Irwell suddenly taking an interest because we happen to be called Manchester. My one relative on the Manc side of the family with an interest in rugby league is a Wigan fan!

Rather than tinkering with the window dressing, the Doc and his acolytes would be better advised to take an urgent look at the club's media, marketing and promotional work, while also improving the transport links and spreading the brand around the city.

I'd rather the name stayed too. If it didn't though I wouldn't be locking myself away and planning a 24 hr picket line either. Playing Devil's advocate a little, the Salford public don't really seem to care for the Club a great deal anyway. A large percentage of Salford's support appear not to be native Salfordians anyway. Will it matter to them?

Personally, I think it's all rubbish anyway. I don't think the Dr has plans to drop it is my personal feeling. However, it's his Club, and he can do what he wants with it.

With this rebranding there are bound to be many rumours flying around from them "in the know" and this leads to a lot of uncertainty amongst other fans not "in the know" but the things we can't do anything about is the grounds location, which is partially the fault of the badly run RFL. So we or the club have to try and ensure that people can get to and from the ground easily, which means talking with TfGM about facilitating this in the future, talking with developers with regards the new access roads and getting these projects completed.
Next we and the club need to go out and market at the grass roots, this may mean talking to the two football clubs about early season promotions via season ticket holders and more so the members of both clubs who don't attend regularly because of cost or demand of the football tickets.
The club could also work with the large housing associations in the city, a potential 60,000 people are tenants' of these landlords and competitions to win tickets or ticket offers could be targeted here.
Keep the website updated and encourage fans to retweet club tweets on a daily basis, even mundane " 2 days away from matchday" tweets with a link in each tweet for tickets etc

Agreed.

As I've said before, getting someone to resurrect our twitter account would be a start.