Attendances aren't a massive driver of success. An extra say 3000 home supporters paying an average of say £15 per ticket (once you have allowed for children, juveniles, pensioner etc) means £45,000 extra revenue per game. Multiply that by 23 games and that is extra revenue of just over £1m in a season. Small beer in the Championship.

Of course I accept that is a very crude bit of modelling - there would be extra revenue from merchandise etc. But there is also a cost to adding size to the stadium. I think the point stands though - a couple of thousands extra home fans per game doesn't make an enormous difference when you see that other clubs in that league get parachute payments of £40m a year or have owners putting £50m in or whatever by 'buying' the stadium like Derby and Wednesday and others have.

Brentford are often held up as an example of a club our size who have broken the mould. How have they done it? Two things. Their owner has put more than £100m in for a start which has definitely helped. Risky to do on its own though The other thing is player sales. Off the top of my head, players like Andre Gray, James Tarkowski, John Egan, Chris Mepham, Jota, Ryan Woods, Scott Hogan and Neil Maupay. They have a virtuous cycle of investing in players, selling them for massive profit and reinvesting well. Those 8 players mentioned alone went for approx. £75m between them. Currently they have Ollie Watkins - apparently they turned bids of £15m down for him in January. They have spent very little in comparison. What have we made in the same period? Perhaps £4m received for Ajayi, Vaulks and Danny Ward (after sell on clauses) and perhaps £1m paid out for a handful like Taylor, Ogbene, Ladapo and maybe a couple more combined.

We are not suddenly going to add many thousands on to our fan base overnight, it wouldn't make a vast difference anyway, and I don't want a risk-taking owner taking a punt with the club. The route to sustainability in the Championship for us is clever transfer dealings and incremental growth over a period of years.

If we go up this season, it is certain to be very tough next season. Could we stay up? Maybe but only just at best. Would I look forward to it? Sort of, but it won't be easy watching at times.

That's a bit confusing gwru because you said in your first post that the only way was to get Rotherham public to fill the home seats then increase capacity. More people will come if we are winning more often. To do that we need better players. How to start the virtuous cycle is the thing. For me the only risk free way is to develop and sell on good young players and reinvest well each time. That process will take several seasons and might even involve a couple of further promotions and delegations, so a bit of patience will also be needed.

Two, four , six or even eight million pounds doesn't cut the mustard in the Championship. Even increasing the cost of season tickets won't help our cause. Unicorns are in short supply and you can forget the pots of gold at the end of each rainbow too. And yet we are in the top spot in League 1. Mustn't grumble though.

UTM!