Your forgetting the big bucks Bradford spent to become the Bulls. They started with very few good players, an average gate of 5,000. They bought early success on borrowed money. That money is now long term debt, some but I suspect not all of which was paid by the sail of Odsal. Due to running such a credit hungry business Bradford have been living off an overdraft for years. An expensive and risky way to borrow. Eventually any bank will look at this and decide that the situation is not sustainable will attempt to salvage what they can by winding the Bulls up. Banks are preffered creditors and after the Tax man gets first dibs on whats left.

The operating costs and turnover has to be factored into the fact that Bradford's overdraft will take every penny of the SKY money every season before they just manage break even and they are probably not alone.

Bradford are spending the full salary cap. Lining beyond their means. Disgrace. They must off load therir highest earming players and at least make an effort to balance the books. If they knock say £ 500,000 of the wage bill by selling these players on the cheap then I think the board would be showing a pragmatic approach, rather than the previous style.

I'm sure Bradford haven't been spending anything like the full salary cap for the last three years? So I doubt that they've been spending over their means in terms of player salaries.

The financial repurcusions of the Iestyn Harris saga has hit Bradford hard.

It's amazing just how many proffessional accountants use this board, it really is. It's a pity the RFL didn't use one of them to go through the license applications.

That's not how I remember it. Brian Smith came in, sold Newlove to Saints and got in return Dwyer, Loughlin and ?Nickle. Robbie Paul was already in their academy and they managed to pick up players like Lowes and Forshaw from Leeds quite cheaply as Leeds were going through something similar to this before Hetherington took over. Who were the big stars that they borrowed big money to sign for their championship winning team in 1997? Even in the later days, no big transfer fees were ever paid out, unlike clubs like Leeds in the early 90s and Warrington more recently who both spent big without championship winning success.

By the looks of it, they may as well have done.

Well, true. There are huge question marks how a club in this state can have achieved a very good license score just months earlier.

But some of the attempts at accounting on here so far have been very interesting. And by interesting, I mean strange. A mixture of captain hindsight and the naivety afforded to people who have never had to run a business.

You either have no memory or are an outright liar. They might have paid through the nose later on, but in those early days that is very definitely not even slightly what happened.

I am sure something will be done to save them, however I doubt there will be much sympathy in the lower leagues for their plight after they were the main instigators (under Caisley) of the carving up of the original Murdoch millions for the few, when it could have been a godsend for the whole game from grass roots up rather than being tossed away on overpaid antipodean journeymen.

Bradford have been in SL since the beginning and have received millions as a consequence, surely the poor management of the club should be looked into and if they do go into administration as a consequence, then they should forfeit their SL place for a championship club who have got it together and deserve a crack at it. Bring in Halifax or Featherstone.

Turnover is the amount of money that goes through their books, both in and out, within a financial period and is not the same thing as operating profit. Hence the turnover of £4m could mean "£1.5m In and £2.5m Out " operating therefore at a loss of £1m per year which was paid through loans or overdrafts.

Are you sure?

Oh no it isn't. Turnover is another word for income. And we're not talking cash terms either, we're talking profit & loss.