I've done some basic maths based on who's come and gone in 2011. I've tried to be fair and reasonable to the club in the assumptions I've made.
Out - Arteta, Yakubu, Beckford, Vaughan, Pienaar, Yobo, Turner. This amounts to approx 19m income from transfer fees. I don't know what players each are paid but I'd estimate that the reduction in salaries is circa 12m per year.
For sales, I'm assuming the club have 19m in fees and reduced running costs by 12m/year.
In - Donovan, Hahnemann, McFadden, Drenthe, Stracqualursi, Vellios. Including loan and signing-on fees we can assume that has cost us approx 3m. Plus wage costs of approx 6.5m. We also extended Fellaini's contract which will have cost (maybe??) 1.5m signing on fee and an additional 1m/year.
Add all this up and the club should have from player transactions alone - 14.5m from transfer fees and reduced the annual wage bill by 4.5m.
Given that last years operating loss was circa 4m we should be back on an even keel and seen 14m come off the debt? Even if some of the fees are paid in instalments, we can assume that as we have not paid a significant fee for a player for more than 2 years, then we aren't still paying out significant sums in transfer fee instalments?
If our MD and Finance Director are better than me with numbers (please God, lets hope so) then a proportion of the money would be put towards keeping the Bank happy with several million left for some player dealings?