The ubiquitous Marwan Koukash has deliberately strengthened the player roster at Salford in the glare of the media spotlight. His constant quest for column inches has kept Salford Red Devils and Rugby League in the red top headlines, but is his hand-built side already overrated?

We have seen a number of high profile signings arrive at Salford over the last few months including Rangi Chase, Adrian Morley and Gareth Hock. The key question at this juncture is how good a squad do they have in the context of the rest of Superleague?

If you look at their recruitment of forwards then it looks quite impressive. Adrian Morley, Gareth Hock , Tony Puletua, Steve Rapira, Harrison Hansen all join a strong looking pack. The issue for me is within the back line and where the trys are going to come from. A look at last season’s Super League and NRL statistics shows that Salford’s squad for this year only scored 87 tries between them. If you compare that to Widnes (112), Wakefield (115) and Castleford (123) then the figure looks quite skinny.

The biggest impact at Salford could come from Rangi Chase. He was top of the Try Assist ranks in last year’s Super League creating 35 tries, next best was Danny Brough with 30 (regular season only). Looking at Salford’s current squad, Chase is responsible for 40% of total assists made these players last term. Would we expect Chase to continue that sort of form at Salford? And how long will it take for his half partner and the rest of the team to gel around him as Castleford did?

There is also the question about how the relationship between Koukash and Brian Noble develops. Recently, we have seen some of the worst examples of sporting ownership at Cardiff City and Hull City football clubs, you would hope with his history in Horse Racing that Koukash may be able to handle difficult times with a little more patience and willingness to take a back seat than the examples from the Premier League. Notably, Koukash has publicly stated that finishing in the top eight is a ‘bare minimum’ expectation this year. It would seem that already, there is a lot of pressure on Noble and it would be interesting to see how the boss reacts to a poor run of results, should that materialise.

The majority of bookmakers make Salford 1/4 make the top eight this season, that's an 80% chance. They have rated Salford the 6th or 7th best team in the Super League (some disagreement between books). You can understand that the bookmakers may want to keep Salford onside this year; given the publicity surrounding the club it is fair to assume that there will be plenty of money behind them in the betting markets. However, I still believe that they are far too short in those outright markets and if you dig into some of the season specials you will find that the bookmakers are offering 5/6 either side for Total Regular Season wins, they have set the line at 15.5 for Salford. Again, this seems high and I believe it should be closer to 12.5. If you compare this to the lines set for Widnes (11.5), Castleford (10.5) and Wakefield (9.5) I can’t see any reason why this Salford team will be 4, 5 and 6 wins better than those teams respectively.

A like-for-like comparison can be made with Warrington side of the mid-noughties. Following the injection of cash by Simon Moran. Warrington finished 6th, 8th & 4th in 2003, 2004 and 2005, with a win percentage of 50%, 35% & 64% respectively. Salford would need to achieve a win rate of 59% should they cover the 15.5 win line, an increase from the 22% they achieved in 2013. This is a team with over 20 personnel changes in the playing staff, the second lowest attendance in Super League and a squad boasting the 2nd lowest combined try tally from last year.

This is a story that will run and run.