I also think he neatly glosses over some of the more nonsensical details of the rules - such as ‘Ship clubs (Everton) being allowed to ‘add back’ [discount, basically] £100m of undefined “Covid losses” but Forest’s being capped at £97.5m less, and £20m of promotion bonuses also not being allowable (how dare we reward our players & staff for achieving so massively beyond expectations 2 years ago?).
My impression is that the majority of Forest fans accept that we broke the rules so must take our medicine. But the abject state of the rules is getting a very easy ride from journos here. “Well the clubs vote the rules in, so only themselves to blame”; yes, but since the rules are hugely advantageous to the majority of PL clubs, any Forest vote against would have been pure posturing (& not exactly started our relationship with the PL on a good footing). You need 14 votes against for anything to change; why would at least 10 of those 14 vote for something that would make the promoted clubs less vulnerable, and thus themselves more vulnerable?
I also dispute the article’s assertion that Forest fans love Marinakis. They love him in comparison with the waist-deep shit-show of Fawaz, yes - but that’s an incredibly low bar. They know that with Marinakis comes a large element of chaos, but accept it because the recent alternative was infinitely worse.
We fucked up and are paying the price. Personally, I hope we don’t appeal and simply focus on out-performing Luton by at least a point over 9 games. Frankly, if we can’t do that, then we deserve to go down.
None the less, the rules stink and the entire PL circus bears only a fleeting, residual resemblance to a fair sporting competition. They don’t want a fair sporting competition; indeed they don’t even think of it in terms of a sporting competition any more - it’s more about brands and selling “product”. The idealist in me prefers the Championship, but then I remember that the Championship is merely a cheap(er)-rate version of the same thing.