NEW Salford consortium lead, Mason Caton-Brown, is “pretty confident” that the club will have 17 players running out at the CorpAcq Stadium at the start of the Championship season.
Caton-Brown’s consortium, which also includes former chairman of the Forever Reds Supporters Malcolm Crompton and businessman Paul Hancock, won the bid for the RFL licence of the wound-up Salford Red Devils ahead of two other groups led by Chris Irwin and Tracy Atiga.
Time is of the essence as they have less than a month to put together a brand-new squad for the season opener at home to Oldham on Friday, January 16.
But Caton-Brown is determined to execute the plan that won his consortium the bid.
“For the last six weeks we’ve been putting a plan together and now we can start executing that plan,” Caton-Brown told League Express.
“We need to advance talks with players we have been speaking to, staff, coaches and that’s the next step. We need to start making some announcements in the next few days.
“We’re pretty confident that by January 16th – Salford’s first Championship fixture against Oldham – we will be able to put out a full team with Salford on their backs so we are looking forward to that.
“We have been speaking to some Super League teams with agreements in place for loans and players they can send to us.
“We will be making some announcements in that period between Christmas and the New Year.”
Asked for a realistic aim next year, Caton-Brown added: “We want to be playing our hearts out, giving good value to the fans and we want the fans to be giving us feedback as well.
“We want to have a stable club. Our first priority is security and stability of our club and we are building that off the field.
“The more stable and secure we are off the field, the better we will perform on the field.”