Up-to-date Nottingham Forest news: Reds’ appeal regarding their four-point deduction for violating the FFP is denied.
The two primary arguments Nottingham Forest used to defend themselves against their four-point deduction were rejected by the impartial panel that was considering their case.
On April 24, the Reds appeared before a three-person panel once more to contest the punishment that was inflicted upon them in March. They were found to have violated the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), and the original punishment was maintained.
The sale of Brennan Johnson to Tottenham Hotspur on deadline day last summer, two months after the end of the relevant financial year, was cited by Forest as a mitigating factor that the original commission failed to consider. The club believed that it was “a further error” to not suspend part or all of the point deduction.
Although the Reds had stated that their appeal was based on “two distinct and fundamental points of principle,” the commission determined that neither of the arguments made sense. We examine the reasons behind Forest’s appeal’s denial below.
The Brennan Johnson argument
Premier League teams are allowed to lose up to £105 million in a rolling three-year period; promoted teams are only allowed to lose up to £61 million. The Reds were discovered to have gone over their budget by £34.5 million.
The sale of Johnson, a graduate of Nigel Doughty Academy, was crucial to the club’s case in their initial hearing. Their “golden mitigation” was that.
Two months after the 2023 fiscal year came to an end, on September 1, 2023, the Wales international was sold to Spurs for a sum of £47.5 million. Forest contended that they made more money by letting him leave later in the window than if a move had been completed earlier in the summer.
To be considered a near miss, an event had to have occurred “if it was truly near to the PSR deadline (June 30, 2023) or at the first available reasonable opportunity proximate to the deadline,” according to the commission during the March hearing. Forest consequently believed their mitigating factor was ignored.
“Did the Commission err in not treating the sale of Player A (Johnson) as mitigation?” was the question posed by the appeal board. They disagreed on whether Forest’s PSR breach was “mitigated or reduced in seriousness” by selling Johnson after the end of the 2023 fiscal year.
The decision of the initial commission was upheld by the appeal board. The first commission “was entitled to conclude” that the sale of Johnson “did not reduce the seriousness of the breach and did not constitute a mitigating factor,” according to the written reasons for the appeal outcome.
Forest claimed that the decision’s opening remarks contained “errors.” Among them is the allegation made by the commission that Forest was “holding out for a higher fee” for Johnson.
The club claims that this proposal went against Mr. Vrentzos’ (Forest board member Ioannis Vrentzos) testimony, which indicated that the club believed its negotiating leverage would wane in September as the transfer window came to an end, according to the written reasons. Furthermore, the commission’s recommendation disregarded the fact that on August 28, 2023, Player A received the first reasonable offer—shortly before he was traded to Tottenham Hotspur. According to the club, no offers were held out for a lower price in relation to ones that would have completely remedied or lessened the breach.
However, as the Premier League (PL) notes, the commission took note of the club’s July 2023 rejection of offers that, if accepted, would have significantly mitigated the PSR breach. The reason they were turned down was that their offer was less than what the club was willing to pay for Player A at that particular point in the transfer window. The commission came to the right conclusion when it said that maximising value or profit “was a more important factor” than trying to make the miss as close as possible.
Points suspension argument
Forest considered it “a further error” to not suspend part or all of the point deduction. They offered “a number of criticisms” of the original commission’s handling of the “suspension issue” in their appeal. However, their case was dismissed at the appeals hearing.
“We reject all the criticisms made by the club of the commission’s approach and reasoning,” the written reasons read. Whether it w
as incorrect to decide not to suspend the sanction is still up for debate.
We believe that it will rarely be appropriate to suspend the sanction in cases where a PSR threshold breach is serious enough to result in a point deduction. In most cases, maintaining the integrity of the sport and being fair to other clubs will require the deduction to be immediate.
The commission was correct to claim that lifting the penalty “would not change anything,” in addition to having the right to say so. For this reason, the points should be immediately sanctioned in the event of a serious breach. A PSR threshold breach is distinct from other types of violations, for which a suspended sanction may effectively discourage future violations and so be beneficial.
The goal of Rule W and the PSR Rules is to make sure that, in the event that the PSR regime is broken, a penalty is applied as soon as possible. It is not permitted by the rules to “spread” a sanction over more than one season.
Appeal conclusion
The initial decision was deemed “commendably clear and comprehensive” by the appeal board. They appear to have taken a jab at the club and their legal team in the summary of the written reasons for their decision.
In summary, they declared: “A close reading of the commission’s language has been used in some of the criticisms levelled against the decision. Such decisions ought not to be interpreted as if they were Parliamentary Counsel-drafted statutes and submitted to microscopic forensic analysis. Claims of grammatical errors or other mistakes that do not affect the final decision increase the complexity and expense of the legal process and are rarely sufficient to successfully challenge a decision.
Citing prior rulings on penalties levied for violating the PSR is another practice that raises costs and complexity. Referrals to the appeals in Sheffield Wednesday and Everton 1 have helped us. This is so because general guidance statements were included in the rulings in both cases. However, citing specific instances based on specific facts is usually useless and ought to be avoided.
“It makes sense that clubs looking to challenge a sanction would look for prior cases to contrast the gravity of the violation in this instance with that in prior cases. The temptation to thoroughly investigate each case and burden appeal boards and commissions with a minute analysis of its similarities and differences from the current case will grow as the number of these cases rises. This kind of approach is rarely beneficial. We all agree that the commission had the right and authority to deduct four points and to refuse to suspend it for the reasons stated above.
