Salford financial issues(again…)

[sweaty craiq]

55 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Well, yeah, i think that absolutely is the question. We've seen what Salford can generate, can others deliver substantially more? 

Leigh showed they could. Wakey too. London probably not in their current state, but you'd be surprised if Toulouse and Bradford couldn't. Obviously the other side, costs can't be ignored, but as blunt measure income is a decent indicator to start with.

Secondary spend masks many evils I know plenty pubs who have a decent turnover but lose money or don’t make much. Eg Leigh get little from secondary income but if LSV put it all through Leigh RL then took it out our top line would be brilliant and still give us no more to spend or lose

[RP London]

11 minutes ago, Exiled Wiganer said:

Thanks for taking the time to make an informed and informative response to my previous hypothetical gaming of the system scenario. Tied in with that is the point that bothers me most around this - how was their imminent demise not sufficient to allow Toulouse to take their place? Nothing peculiar or unexpected has happened. They didn’t have a major backer or  major sponsor pull out. All that happened was that their cash ran out, because more was being spent than was coming in. How on earth was that not picked up, and their place given to Toulouse?

I have assessed many proposals in my working life, and there is always an ability for the assessors to flag up game breakers, which allow/require you to ensure the outcome isn’t nonsensical - even if the assessors felt constrained by the point scoring system, there must have been room for them to say something like “they score highly enough across the board, but unless a white knight comes over the horizon won’t be able to field a team”. Which would surely have got people’s attentions. I hope someone somewhere with the power to sort this out gets a grip. 

I hope they dont TBH.

The reason I say that is that as soon as you get into that it becomes subjective and this whole system is designed to not be becuase the last time we went down the licencing route we did and it was problematic. You give them a set of accounts and they score off that, Salford scored woefully on financials as per what you would expect and as you point out. However, what is telling is no one was good enough to stop them continuing on , is that Salford's fault, the fault of the scoring, or the fault of the other clubs that they are in a worse position (across the board) than Salford. 

We Salford a white knight away or maybe someone there could have just put their hand in their pocket like other clubs do? could they have a funding stream about to hit the second after the SL place is guaranteed but until it is you are under an NDA to them therefore cant tell anyone etc etc etc etc.. If its an objective test then its an objective test. 

Is that perfect? no. Was the subjective test? God no. Was P&R? demonstrably not as we are where we are... so what do we go with?? 

trying to ignore the obvious Butterfly Effect issue of changing one part of the past but.... IF the system was skewed slightly differently would Salford have scrabbled the cash together through directors loans to make sure they are in a better position to sell the club as a super league club and then recoup the "loans" from the sale therefore getting around all of this. As it was with the system they got an advance from SL with conditions and they can still do the sale without having to put their hand in their pocket.. that could be simply the only difference in scenarios.. neither of which are ideal, however, you change the system the outcome is still potentially the same (Salford get sold or potentially go bust) just the ways of getting there are slightly different. 

I think the proof of this will be in what happens next. 

[sweaty craiq]

7 hours ago, Charlie said:

You heard wrong 

The joy of whispers! Who is it then as it would be unusual for a buyer to come in , take on the debt, do DD and meet payroll in a few days

[binosh]

Well Salfords payroll was this week, I wonder if wages were paid?

[Martyn Sadler]

38 minutes ago, binosh said:

Well Salfords payroll was this week, I wonder if wages were paid?

I believe the payment date is next Thursday.

[DemonUK]

45 minutes ago, Martyn Sadler said:

I believe the payment date is next Thursday.

Anything you are waiting for from Salford ..... just pick a day the following week and hope people forget.  Takeover day today isn't it

[LeytherRob]

1 minute ago, DemonUK said:

Anything you are waiting for from Salford ..... just pick a day the following week and hope people forget.  Takeover day today isn't it

Supposed to be, although we don't know if the RFL has given them a stay of execution after it was announced a bid had been submitted. 

[sweaty craiq]

17 minutes ago, LeytherRob said:

Supposed to be, although we don't know if the RFL has given them a stay of execution after it was announced a bid had been submitted. 

Binosh and I got together in the Bobbin and tabled a bid also

[Wilderspoolmemories]

On 17/01/2025 at 23:52, M j M said:

The HJ is a very atmospheric stadium, I honestly don't know why people would pretend it isn't.

I'm a wire fan and when things aren't going well you can hear a pin drop in the HJ, at Wilderspool they crowd would get behind the team and lift them if they were struggling. It doesn't happen at the HJ.

[M j M]

27 minutes ago, Wilderspoolmemories said:

I'm a wire fan and when things aren't going well you can hear a pin drop in the HJ, at Wilderspool they crowd would get behind the team and lift them if they were struggling. It doesn't happen at the HJ.

Hmmm I'm not convinced by this, not every game was the WW3 match.

People say the same about Headingley old vs new but if the side was losing or beating a team the crowd expected them to beat it was often very quiet.

[Wakefield Ram]

On 23/01/2025 at 13:26, RP London said:

I hope they dont TBH.

The reason I say that is that as soon as you get into that it becomes subjective and this whole system is designed to not be becuase the last time we went down the licencing route we did and it was problematic. You give them a set of accounts and they score off that, Salford scored woefully on financials as per what you would expect and as you point out. However, what is telling is no one was good enough to stop them continuing on , is that Salford's fault, the fault of the scoring, or the fault of the other clubs that they are in a worse position (across the board) than Salford. 

We Salford a white knight away or maybe someone there could have just put their hand in their pocket like other clubs do? could they have a funding stream about to hit the second after the SL place is guaranteed but until it is you are under an NDA to them therefore cant tell anyone etc etc etc etc.. If its an objective test then its an objective test. 

Is that perfect? no. Was the subjective test? God no. Was P&R? demonstrably not as we are where we are... so what do we go with?? 

trying to ignore the obvious Butterfly Effect issue of changing one part of the past but.... IF the system was skewed slightly differently would Salford have scrabbled the cash together through directors loans to make sure they are in a better position to sell the club as a super league club and then recoup the "loans" from the sale therefore getting around all of this. As it was with the system they got an advance from SL with conditions and they can still do the sale without having to put their hand in their pocket.. that could be simply the only difference in scenarios.. neither of which are ideal, however, you change the system the outcome is still potentially the same (Salford get sold or potentially go bust) just the ways of getting there are slightly different. 

I think the proof of this will be in what happens next. 

The IMG scoring is based on subjective criteria with subjective weighting and subjective boundaries within the criteria.

It is a failure of the scoring that Salford scored enough despite being months from administration/liquidation. IMG is just a scoring system, it should not replace common sense. Without finance to run the club, the rest of the criteria are meaningless. 

If a club has no money then how on earth can it retain a place in SL?

Maybe include a score for "do you have funding in place to run a competitive team in SL next season" and if the answer is No you lose 5 points.

Edited January 24 by Wakefield Ram

[RP London]

5 minutes ago, Wakefield Ram said:

The IMG scoring is based on subjective criteria with subjective weighting and subjective boundaries within the criteria.

It is a failure of the scoring that Salford scored enough despite being months from administration/liquidation. IMG is just a scoring system, it should not replace common sense. Without finance to run the club, the rest of the criteria are meaningless. 

If a club has no money then how on earth can it retain a place in SL?

Maybe include a score for "do you have funding in place to run a competitive team in SL next season" and if the answer is No you lose 5 points.

what is subjective? It all has metrics.

As I said previously, if you put those 2 criteria in it is relatively easy to get around them dependent on the situation. We are only seeing the top line of the situation, the actually depth of information would show us exactly how you could have got around any of the obstacles people think should be there. If you want to keep a club going so that it is in the Super League for the purposes of the people talking to you about buying it or just to realise the purchase prices of a Super league club instead of a Championship club it can be done.

define competitive.. and how can you measure that before a ball has been kicked? London pre the first match were not defined as competitive last year yet only missed out on "on the field survival" by a tiny margin and stayed competitive in many games. 

Remember Salford scored poorly on the financials reflecting the situation they were in. 

What people are forgetting is that if you want to play fast and lose with a system it doesnt matter what that system is or what checks and balances are put in place it is still possible to play fast and lose with it. People think that putting in a check that would have caught the Salford we see today would have stopped it happening, it wouldn't we would have just seen a different version of the Salford we see today and this discussion would be going on with great ideas of how to have caught them not realising that (again back to the Butterfly Effect Theory) any change you make in the past will change the future in many tiny ways but so that it could be unrecognisable. 

its the same as people saying "Leeds wouldn't have won the title when they came 5th except for becuase of the play offs". Thats a false argument. They knew that 5th gets you into the play offs and therefore, arguably, they played it perfectly to then have enough in the tank to fight through the play offs. IF the rule, from before the season started, had been finishing top then they would have played the season differently taking different games more seriously playing players through injuries rather than resting them etc etc.

You cannot think that changing the rules in the past does not have an effect on the future conduct of a club looking to bend those rules to get to where they need to get to, they would just bend the rule you put in place rather than the rule that is there now.

[Exiled Wiganer]

I agree with RP’s post above to some extent.
 

However, it would have been feasible to go beyond the numbers and assess the likelihood of being able to field a professional team, and give that a very high weighting. Nothing odd has happened to Salford - they didn’t lose a key sponsor or a key investor. What they have done is run out of credit, having out spent income over a long period of time with no external support or assets to draw upon. 
 

We have different takes on this - mine is that it fundamentally damages everything this process is supposed to work towards: improving standards and a high quality competition - for either this test or its application to have failed to pick this up. 

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

1 hour ago, Wakefield Ram said:

The IMG scoring is based on subjective criteria with subjective weighting and subjective boundaries within the criteria.

It is a failure of the scoring that Salford scored enough despite being months from administration/liquidation. IMG is just a scoring system, it should not replace common sense. Without finance to run the club, the rest of the criteria are meaningless. 

If a club has no money then how on earth can it retain a place in SL?

Maybe include a score for "do you have funding in place to run a competitive team in SL next season" and if the answer is No you lose 5 points.

Far too many of the criteria have bands that are so wide that they are essentially useless as a means to provide useful demarcation.

[Dave T]

2 hours ago, M j M said:

Hmmm I'm not convinced by this, not every game was the WW3 match.

People say the same about Headingley old vs new but if the side was losing or beating a team the crowd expected them to beat it was often very quiet.

Wilderspool was just as depressing as any other ground when the team was doing poorly. Particularly when we only had 4k in.

[Dullish Mood]

2 hours ago, Wilderspoolmemories said:

I'm a wire fan and when things aren't going well you can hear a pin drop in the HJ, at Wilderspool they crowd would get behind the team and lift them if they were struggling. It doesn't happen at the HJ.

Been watching Wire since the mid 80s and wouldn’t necessarily agree there mate.  Sure we had some massive games there against Wigan, Widnes, Saints etc.  The majority of games had 4-5 k on and don’t forget it was essentially a 3 sided ground with only about 200 people on the snookers side?

[Tommygilf]

1 hour ago, RP London said:

what is subjective? It all has metrics.

As I said previously, if you put those 2 criteria in it is relatively easy to get around them dependent on the situation. We are only seeing the top line of the situation, the actually depth of information would show us exactly how you could have got around any of the obstacles people think should be there. If you want to keep a club going so that it is in the Super League for the purposes of the people talking to you about buying it or just to realise the purchase prices of a Super league club instead of a Championship club it can be done.

define competitive.. and how can you measure that before a ball has been kicked? London pre the first match were not defined as competitive last year yet only missed out on "on the field survival" by a tiny margin and stayed competitive in many games. 

Remember Salford scored poorly on the financials reflecting the situation they were in. 

What people are forgetting is that if you want to play fast and lose with a system it doesnt matter what that system is or what checks and balances are put in place it is still possible to play fast and lose with it. People think that putting in a check that would have caught the Salford we see today would have stopped it happening, it wouldn't we would have just seen a different version of the Salford we see today and this discussion would be going on with great ideas of how to have caught them not realising that (again back to the Butterfly Effect Theory) any change you make in the past will change the future in many tiny ways but so that it could be unrecognisable. 

its the same as people saying "Leeds wouldn't have won the title when they came 5th except for becuase of the play offs". Thats a false argument. They knew that 5th gets you into the play offs and therefore, arguably, they played it perfectly to then have enough in the tank to fight through the play offs. IF the rule, from before the season started, had been finishing top then they would have played the season differently taking different games more seriously playing players through injuries rather than resting them etc etc.

You cannot think that changing the rules in the past does not have an effect on the future conduct of a club looking to bend those rules to get to where they need to get to, they would just bend the rule you put in place rather than the rule that is there now.

I also think that the basis of these metrics are "what is actually there".

That prevents clubs saying "there's a sugar daddy coming in 3 weeks" or "our new stadium plans look amazing", or conversely "we're going into administration in 6 months". 

I think that is a fair way to do it and removes the chances of false promises. Salford are poor financially and score poorly. If it weren't for their good on field performances, they wouldn't be in Super League.

Good and Bad things can come after, but the annual snapshot captures the grades at that moment and not what might be.

[Worzel]

1 hour ago, RP London said:

what is subjective? It all has metrics.

As I said previously, if you put those 2 criteria in it is relatively easy to get around them dependent on the situation. We are only seeing the top line of the situation, the actually depth of information would show us exactly how you could have got around any of the obstacles people think should be there. If you want to keep a club going so that it is in the Super League for the purposes of the people talking to you about buying it or just to realise the purchase prices of a Super league club instead of a Championship club it can be done.

define competitive.. and how can you measure that before a ball has been kicked? London pre the first match were not defined as competitive last year yet only missed out on "on the field survival" by a tiny margin and stayed competitive in many games. 

Remember Salford scored poorly on the financials reflecting the situation they were in. 

What people are forgetting is that if you want to play fast and lose with a system it doesnt matter what that system is or what checks and balances are put in place it is still possible to play fast and lose with it. People think that putting in a check that would have caught the Salford we see today would have stopped it happening, it wouldn't we would have just seen a different version of the Salford we see today and this discussion would be going on with great ideas of how to have caught them not realising that (again back to the Butterfly Effect Theory) any change you make in the past will change the future in many tiny ways but so that it could be unrecognisable. 

its the same as people saying "Leeds wouldn't have won the title when they came 5th except for becuase of the play offs". Thats a false argument. They knew that 5th gets you into the play offs and therefore, arguably, they played it perfectly to then have enough in the tank to fight through the play offs. IF the rule, from before the season started, had been finishing top then they would have played the season differently taking different games more seriously playing players through injuries rather than resting them etc etc.

You cannot think that changing the rules in the past does not have an effect on the future conduct of a club looking to bend those rules to get to where they need to get to, they would just bend the rule you put in place rather than the rule that is there now.

Precisely this. If the model had different rules requiring the clubs to show proof of future investor support, I'm sure the clubs (including Salford) would have found a way to show it when required. But that would still always have been contingent on them changing things in the future.

There's no magic wand solution to this challenge. 

[M j M]

1 hour ago, RP London said:

what is subjective? It all has metrics.

 

It's not that subjective once now it's in place but the decisions on what metrics to include, what weighting to give them and where the line was drawn for an A grade were choices which were made. It could easily have been sliced very differently, with less weight on things which heavily favoured SL incumbency for example, with material impacts on how the gradings turned out.

[Wilderspoolmemories]

4 minutes ago, Dullish Mood said:

Been watching Wire since the mid 80s and wouldn’t necessarily agree there mate.  Sure we had some massive games there against Wigan, Widnes, Saints etc.  The majority of games had 4-5 k on and don’t forget it was essentially a 3 sided ground with only about 200 people on the snookers side?

Showing your ( young) age there! I remember bigger crowds than that and being crammed in like sardines for a big match. Warrington v Australia 1978 or Warrington v Wigan new year's Day 1994? 

[Jill Halfpenny fan]

2 hours ago, Wakefield Ram said:

The IMG scoring is based on subjective criteria with subjective weighting and subjective boundaries within the criteria.

 

It would appear that you and I have the same understanding of the meaning of the word, subjective. 

[Click]

20 minutes ago, Wilderspoolmemories said:

Showing your ( young) age there! I remember bigger crowds than that and being crammed in like sardines for a big match. Warrington v Australia 1978 or Warrington v Wigan new year's Day 1994? 

I'm not sure quoting 2 big matches 20 years apart proves your point very well.

[Dullish Mood]

38 minutes ago, Wilderspoolmemories said:

Showing your ( young) age there! I remember bigger crowds than that and being crammed in like sardines for a big match. Warrington v Australia 1978 or Warrington v Wigan new year's Day 1994? 

Yeh, was there for Wigan 1994 (robbing get Smith) and of course World War III against…..Wigan 1988.  That’s kinda me point though, amazing atmosphere at times for games like Wigan, Australia.  Standard game was garbage though in front of said 4K people.

[Wakefield Ram]

1 hour ago, Les Tonks Sidestep said:

Far too many of the criteria have bands that are so wide that they are essentially useless as a means to provide useful demarcation.

My main question was what was the evidence for selecting the demarcation lines? 

If I segmented stuff at work, the first question I'd get asked is what's your basis for the demarcation lines? Is there historical evidence that clubs get over 3000 attendance in Championship can expect to get friends of 7000+ in SL?

In maths, the equivalent of where's the workings? 

Edited January 24 by Wakefield Ram

[Wilderspoolmemories]

31 minutes ago, Click said:

I'm not sure quoting 2 big matches 20 years apart proves your point very well.

Those are just examples, I have neither the time nor the desire to list them all.