I know that, I'm not that stupid Rob, but we must have banked millions surely ? I would have thought we would have put aside decent money for transfers and an assault on an immediate return to the Prem ?
Sorry I didn't mean to suggest you were being thick at all. It's just a case of we need to do an illustrative example to see where we are really at. There's not much chance of as having much money if you try doing rough calculations:
Our turnover 13/14 will have been roughly (for the sake of argument) £90m, of which £60m was in tv money and £30m will have been generated by the club.
Our expenses were about £60m on everything except transfer fees. We spent about £20m in the summer and had £10m in reserve for January.
This year, our expenses may have come down a bit (hopefully). With luck, already down to £50m. We have lost all the tv money, but receive £15m in parachute payments. We also will probably have a small drop in club-generated income - say to £25m.
That means we have expenses of £50m and a turnover of £40m. So that £10m we held in reserve in January has already been used to cover the deficit in our costs/turnover. That means the only way we would have money to buy players is to sell first.
Obviously those are very rough figures and it's not that simple.
However, from what I've seen I think we are currently acting on a cost neutral basis with player transfers, which means those calculations are likely to be pretty accurate (not necessarily the sum, but the overall result of now having an equal cost/turnover). We might see, say, Fer, sold with some money not reinvested to hold back for January. However, the idea that we are rolling in luchre is unlikely, if not impossible.