Show us the money!

The article by Neil Doncaster in today's EDP raises more questions than it answers. By his own account "the club's cash balances were only £580,000 better off after our Premier League season than before". It is difficult to be precise about this, of course, because as always, Mr Doncaster is being more opaque than he at first appears.

Since then we have sold Thomas Helveg for £135,000, Mattias Jonson for £650,000, Damien Francis for £1.5 million and Dean Ashton £7.25 million (receiving - it appears from Mr Doncaster says - in excess of £5.75 million at that time). We have also received two Premiership parachute payments in excess of £6 million each.

Since then we have bought Jurgen Colin for £250,000, Andy Hughes for £500,000, Dickson Etuhu for £450,000, Carl Robinson for £50,000, Robert Earnshaw for £3.5 million and now Lee Croft for £600,000. And built a new stand for £3.2 million.

That is a still huge imbalance between incomings and outgoings - and the explanation seems to be a "player wage bill massively higher than in our promotion season of 2003/2004" - in other words the club is making a massive operating loss week after week. So what happens next year when there is no £6 million from Sky to cover it?

And, well as we played the other night the squad today is certainly no better than it was three years ago despite the fact that their wages are "massively higher"- evidence , once again, that the board's policy of allowing the manager to spend the player budget entirely as "he sees fit" is unwise?

And does securitising one year's losses over a very long-term really make sound financial sense?