But this means that the year to June 2018 could be severe as we bought Lawrence for what, £7m? This was funded from the sale of Ince but in accounting terms there is a mismatch as the sale and purchase fell into two different financial years. In effect the Ince money had already gone before we started our pre season 2017-18 spending: please note R4J/DDD if you are reading in exile - you were told but refused to believe, wanting to spend it again on Jota. Good job that never happened, eh - but now you see why.

Even with the revenue from Hendrick, Hughes and Ince, net of Vydra, Anya and Nugent (plus £ 16.2m), we still made an £ 8m loss - then shelled out for Lawrence with no matching incoming fees.

Or, to put it another way, if we had not peddled our stars, we would have lost upward of £ 25 million on recurrent trading. So for 2017-18 its fair to say that this may persist, and with no real asset sales to offset the purchase of Lawrence, Jerome and the new "lo fee hi wage" over 30 mercenaries I'd say we are looking down the ragged end of a costly year if we don't go up.

And looking to the future, if we don't go up, we wont have any operating profit to reinvest (unless Mel feels very very generous) and no real income generating assets to sell. The pot looks empty - this year may be a last hurrah - and everyone knows you cannot win anything with kids.

Sorry that's a bit gloomy but one gets the feeling that the timing of the comments about Sam Rush were perhaps a convenient obfuscation.