You suggested that if the RFL were to support Salford, they would need to bankroll the club for two seasons.

Red John was saying that a business plan is in place, audited by KPMG and Peel's accountants, which foresees a profit based on significantly reduced expenditure.

Any RFL funding would be to get over the present crisis.

We're getting a bit closer to what actually said now aren't we.



I was responding to a poster who said the rfl should definately bail salford out now and for the next two season i said they shouldn't and gave my reasons why.



Go back to the other poster and ask him why he thinks salford [ushould[/u be bailed out for the next two years.

If i remember rightly the club announcement said 'firms like kpmg'. The business plan was based on 1.5 million pounds of loans not an investors cash. This is being strung out as long as JW can do to try and force the RFLs hand. The club is now subject to a second winding up petition brought by Luke Patten. This was reported in Business Week on Friday. There are no investors and if there were they will not be taking on your debts.

Er, I can't quite see what there is to expand - one club goes phut, the lower division side best placed to put a competative side on the park takes their place (I know that this screws up the SL table, but there seems no other way out of this), the Sky fixtures as far as round 23 are announced with, presumably, the contracts with their OB provider signed.

It was me that suggested that Salford should be provided with the neccessary funds to complete the current licence period in SL, a different situation to your ' bankrolling '



If they just ' expected ' 8,000 to turn up, they are more stupid than I thought, all through the build term of Barton I was posting on the Salford site and actually predicting the problems you would have, I was told the ' business plans ' were in place to negate those fears, so dont bother quoting yet another one as proof of Salfords secure short term future



It will take 5 to 10 years of hard work and cash investement to make Salford at Barton a secure self sustaning SL club able to compete with the best, my suggestion was to get all our current clubs to 2015 when a total restructure will be needed, all IMO of course

It would seem I missunderstood your post, I read it as a Championship club just taking part in the magic weekend, not the full SL season

Sorry to chip in Red John but, it doesnt matter who may have looked at a business plan, it is only a plan.

You may recall that the Bulls had a robust achievable plan and look what happened there.

Who told you the club had such business plans in place? Just because something appears on a fans' forum doesn't mean it's true. Not even if they put 'FACT' in big important capitals at the end of it.



The club's forecasts were, it appears, based on attendances of 8000. These were obviously massively over optimistic, and you did spend a lot of time on the Salford forum saying that. The new business plan seems to be based on attendances closer to those achieved last season, which is - implicitly - what you were saying they should do, so why wouldn't you believe this plan is more viable?

No need to apologise. It's a public forum, after all.



Plans are, indeed, only plans, but you can look at a business plan and determine, within reasonable parameters, how viable that plan would be. A plan that shows Salford pulling in 8000 in their first season at Barton was like a Baldrick plan. A plan based on drawing attendances similar to last season seems more reasonable, doesn't it?

He did say 'firms like KPMG', but by this he meant 'two firms, one of which was KPMG', not 'a firm called PKGM, which is a firm like KPMG'.



Do you have any evidence to suggest John WIlkinson is stringing this out?



In the fans meeting, he told us there were two interested parties. If you know neither of them exist, can you tell us how you know this?

Absolutely right.

I cant remember which footie chairman it was (it may have been Ken Bates back in his Chelsea days), who always spoke of budgeting for a mid table finish and going out of both cups in the 1st round that they played in (obviously 3rd round of the FA Cup etc, but you know what he meant) and this was to prevent over ambitioous spending.

Certainly a number of SL clubs have been guilty of hoping/expecting too much and its certainly a shame for your club, who appeared from the outside to be following a sensible plan. Although if you did need 8000 fans to "break even", then clearly,, not enough was being done to achieve this in terms of marketing and promotion and you certainly weren't helped with the enforced switch of the Wakefield game at the end of last season.

FWIW, I hope that you come through the other side, good luck !

It depends if this new plan includes a sizeable marketing budget, and somebody on the payroll able to deliver the neccessary work to increase the support base, if it does then it might stand a chance of success