www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/02/16/nottingham-forest-premier-league-spending-breach/
Nottingham Forest are set to discover next week the date for their crucial hearing over the Premier League’s charge for breaking financial regulations.
Forest will appear before a three-person independent commission after admitting a breach of the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), in what could be a defining moment of the season.
If they can't give Man City a 100 point deduction for their transgressions, maybe they could just give everyone else a 100 point bonus for being less bad faith.
So, this is weird.
Headline is certain “will suffer”, first paragraph says “chief executives” and then, by the second, we’re down to it being just one person’s opinion.
Yeah my Dad sent it me last night. There's no 'news' in the article really.
Incidentally, I was looking at an Everton forum last night and their view, unsurprisingly, is that our attempt at mitigation is a joke. The points deduction is to prevent teams who break the rules gaining a competitive advantage over teams who stay within them. So our argument that we got another £13m for Brennan by holding onto him for two months, if anything, makes things worse.
And if you read the commission's verdict on Everton, they state that they aren't there to judge whether the rules are right or wrong, just to decide on a punishment based on those rules. So moaning about how unfair the rules are to a newly promoted team with no squad to start with is unlikely to work either.
The Everton defence seems to mostly consist of mud slinging and shouting and having already failed once maybe we should try a different plan.
Going to court and say yes I'm sorry, won't happen again normally gets a more favourable outcome then going in shouting the odds, calling the judge a homo and accusing corruption.
Harry Toffolo agrees. Big Dog Toney is still shouting the odds and blaming everyone else.
Ingo agrees. I got a 6 month ban and £45 costs, the bellend before me who couldn't control his temper got 18 months and a fine.
As long as our defence doesn't include whinging about how unfair the rules are to newly promoted teams. The Everton verdict was also clear that the commission was only interested in applying the rules, not debating them.
However laughable it is that by delaying Brennan's transfer for 2 months, we somehow gained a competitive advantage over 16 teams with three years of premier league income (and allowable losses), including the three who were relegated. With the other three being Brentford, two years of premier league income and losses, Bouremouth, only one year of premier league income but two parachute payments and Fulham two years of premier income and one with parachute payments.
The idea of the profit and sustainability rules is to limit the possibility of promoted teams staying up sustainably, and thus maintaining a virtual closed shop. We broke the rules, and gave ourselves a chance. It's quite clear that it is an egregious breach of the rules. It will be dealt with accordingly by the football prevention independent committee.
I love a good conspiracy theory but this, and the much favoured one about referees being biased against us, does suggest that "the premier league" would prefer to have Luton than us (or Everton) as members. Which seems unlikely.
That they want punishments to be harsh enough to show they can keep their own house in order without the need for an "independent" (of whom?) regulator is far more believable.
No doubt about that. But the point is that the rules are a nonsense for their stated objectives. The premier league clubs themselves vote on them. When Leicester did, they were imagining that it would send us down, not them. That we diddled the system, means that the existing hegemony want to disincentivise any such possible future transgressions, that might jeopardise their members. Nothing personal. Just business.
But we are now the existing hegemony. And Leicester aren't.
Not really. Leicester are coming back, we should have gone back. Three of the members who voted for the rules are going down. They expect to come straight back, and none of the other members want to give up their place for them. They want us to know our place and get back down. It's obviously not a perfect system, because they have to lie to your face to pretend that it's a competitive pyramid and based on merit...and where oodles of cash come into the league, to the benefit of increased turnover for all, they will swallow the odd one...but they don't mean it, and they will rig the deck as much as possible to protect the status quo...or at least keep it quoish. Particularly at the massive turnover end of the league, where the greatest self-perpetuated advantage persists. There will always be a bit of death and dismemberment at the foot soldier end of the table...as is ever thus in establishment orders.
But the choice now isn't between us and Leicester, it's between us and Luton.
(And, if the aim is the preserve the status quo, what on earth were they doing taking 10 points off Everton?)
