Koukash seems to have riled a few on this forum but the game needs people like him. He seems to be willing to speak to the media and he gets press coverage to the game and at least he has got some ambition and wants Salford to do well, and he apparently has money that he is bringing in to the game which RL badly needs.

Without someone with real ambition, Salford were always going to stay as a struggling club. If he does have money then he might make mistakes along the way but if he leaves Salford a richer and stronger club with a more professional set up then great for the game. Brian Noble is a good coach and rugby man and he will make the club professional.

He is obviously an extrovert personality but I think Koukash would have benefited from being like Simon Moran. Simon Moran was in the same position 9 years ago with us but he stayed behind the scenes. He made big statements through actions not words: Gleeson, Johns, Morley etc, even though it took us a while to win that first Challenge Cup everybody knew that Simon Moran was serious.

At the moment Koukash is talking big but nobody really knows if he is the real deal. He needs to make statements like Simon Moran did, not with his mouth but by making signings that change perceptions of the club.

I'm not at all keen on Koukash, but you're wrong Sal. Without him Salford wouldn't have been struggling, they would have gone.

The only thing he's spending it on are fines at the min. Been deducted 2 points and fined £5,000 for appealing against the £10,000 fine for fielding 14 players.

im still waiting for him to take the comedy mask off.

All mouth no trousers.

I've just read his quotes re the point deductions I'm half expecting him to flare his nostrils, Kenneth Williams style, and re-enact this comedy classic scene www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

I've just read his quotes re the point deductions I'm half expecting him to flare his nostrils, Kenneth Williams style, and re-enact this comedy classic scene www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

Sorry to pull in a football example, but it was all the same when City were taken over by Sheikh Mansour. There were people at the club shouting out from the rooftops at first and there were many fans of other clubs laughing and saying "they've wasted money" "they've bought rubbish" "you can't buy titles"...but after a while the people shouting their mouths off at the club were sacked, City started to buy higher quality players over time and then fans of other clubs were saying "but you've only bought the trophies you've won"...now with increased revenue streams City's net spend in the last two transfer windows is actually just £15m which is less than Chelsea(£78m) United(£53m) Liverpool(£50m) QPR Southampton Newcastle WestHam AstonVilla Stoke and Sunderland. Nobody at the club is running their mouth off anymore and overall City are great for the sport.

And that's what I see happening with Salford. I think Koukash will learn to keep his mouth shut, over time they will steadily build a decent side, their crowds will grow, they may be successful and maybe this will entice other people to invest in this sport. These things don't happen over night, they take years. Overall things like this are only ever positive for a sport. When money is high at the top it feeds it's way down and a sport is richer overall, than when you're competing at a level to keep the bottom clubs competitive by having a low salary cap. For me, that only works for a certain amount of time before the best players sod off somewhere where they can earn some real money.

Koukash is very successful at that horse racing lark. Not sure of the exact figures but say of 750 runners he's had something like 150 winners in the last year. The top house has won around 210 from 700 runs so he's doing something right. I'll bet at first he wasn't winning at that ratio but over time he got the right people doing the right jobs in the right places and became successful.

Look at French rugby yawnion - yes, I know it helps when a government can ban the competition (ba$tard$!) - but it was no bigger or any more special than any other league. Then investment started coming in and clubs started to become successful on bigger stages and more investment came. Then players from all round the world wanted to go and play in France. To be a successful sport rugby league needs investment and more coverage across the media. Koukash is bringing that; and we need more!

The man talks utter rubbish, but that doesn't mean he won't do a good job.

Sorry for continuing the football link but in short. Wasn't the first golden egg at City Thaksin Shinawatra? I think you will find it was. What happend to him?

Excellent post

BTW Caveman don't let the last two years net transfer spend at Citeh cloud your accounting judgement about what the club has really spent winning their third title

Depends how you quantify 'very successful'. The win to run % of his horses has actually remained fairly constant since he had his first runners as an owner in 2007 - it's about 14/15%, which isn't too shabby, but it's not massively impressive either. He netted around £1m in prize money last year, but with over 60 horses in training, where the average cost to keep a horse in training for a year is about £20k, you don't have to be a mathematical genius to see he's not making a fortune with this pursuit. Of course, the real money in horseracing is in bloodstock, though again, I'm not aware of any of his horses raking it in in the breeding sheds. He isn't going to become a big shot in racing unless he gets lucky with one or two horses, but the odds are stacked against him, competing against the likes of Coolmore, Godolphin, Abdullah and the al-Thanis. The vast majority of his horses are mediocre at best, which made all the more notable one of his earliest pronouncements on taking over at Salford that 'we will not tolerate mediocrity'.

Oh indeed. But any business that wants to become successful needs investment. And is all this with City any different to United's incarnation from Newton Heath in the early 1900s when they were built a new stadium, bought a new team, changed their name, changed their kit and won their first ever titles after nearly going bust? Is it worse than when Arsenal finished fifth in the second division in 1919 yet bizarrely got promoted (very dodgy!) and bought a whole new team and poached the manager from the most successful team of the time (Huddersfield) and went on to become successful? Is it any different from Everton's 'Merseyside Millions' in the 1960s? Or Real Madrid with the government handouts? etc.

At some point a club that is a big club started out with heavy investment which saw them rise to the top quickly. Some stay there, like Arsenal; some don't, like Preston; some have numerous large investors over many decades saving their bacon or making them successful, like United with John Henry Davies then James W Gibson then Louis Edwards.

I didn't realise he was only making that much money from racing. That's not a great deal in today's world really. I take it he has business ventures in other areas?(any Salford fans know more about this?)

....and there was me thinking this was a Rugby League forum. Has someone hit a raw nerve here?

Not at all. I'm very calm on talking about this, just wouldn't like people thinking City are a unique situation. Plus the subject is about Koukash and his cash and I think it's quite apt to talk about City. I have also mentioned horse racing and French rugby union.

Why the moaning and groaning about a 10 grand fine ? Should be back pocket money to a multi-millionaire(self proclaimed) like Koukash. He's been huffing and puffing for months now concerning what quality he is going to bring to Salford. What happens when a quality player becomes available at Bradford ? Naff all that's what. I've said it for months that this man is a fake and a scandal waiting to happen. I suspect he's taken over at Salford in much the same way the Glazers took over Man U....By leverage which is another way of saying debt.