Raising cash through share options is always a decent way to make money, providing again that existing shareholders are happy to have a smaller % of the club in doing so.

Where one sees these big swings, how much is 'real' as a layman would understand it and how much is down to accounting practices/client choice and the way dates fall? As a layman I find some of them hard to, ahem, account for.

The selection of just one club, the one with the worst deterioration in a league with overall improving results, as a comparator for Rovers performance is frankly a journalistic embarrassment. Why would you just pick Saints when 8 clubs improved (2 of which by £1m and £800k) and only 4 went backwards? Do you think someone has just told him this anecdotally and he's printed it without being @rsed to see what anyone else has done?

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Not a bad result when put against the average of the 13 clubs who have thus far declared (-£272,592)

Both Rovers and the league average are headed in the right direction.

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I think we both know the answers here:

(1) Mullen is to journalism as Cabman is to understatement.

(2) After the recent retraction of the article he penned last year (same subject), the Mail are looking to avoid a similar reaction from Rovers.

A far better comparator would have been Huddersfield. Similar on field performance in SL, although they did reach Wembley (you wouldn't tell from the financial results!), fairly similar gates.

You can't really tell for most clubs as they only file a balance sheet, so you have to take the P&L movement. The thing is, though, is that accounting in businesses of this size in in this sector are relatively simple, compared to say manufacturing or financial services for example. There may be some grey areas like provisions (where you have to take a judgement on a future liability that's not fully quantifiable yet, for example), but generally speaking it's not an accounting minefield. The swing at Leeds is pretty easy to understand as they are in a league of their own financially and the £700k profit is more representative of their underlying position than the loss they made the previous year which IIRC had an exceptional item in it. Salford's not sure about - they don't seem to have spent the full cap, but it is a big turnaround. Warrington's can be explained by their CC appearance. Cas also improved significantly. The accounting dates point is not really that relevant as clubs have either an October or November year end to coincide with contract end dates. Having said that Leeds results are for only 10 months, so maybe on a like for like basis they're actually better than the £700k reported over a full year.

I fail to see what all your ranting about Rovers accounts is trying to prove.Stop worrying about us, we'll be alright