Nottingham Forest’s appeal against their four-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) is set to begin on Monday 22 April.
The club are reportedly still hopeful for a reduction in their punishment, which would have a massive impact on their hopes of Premier League survival.
Everton appealed against their 10-point PSR penalty at the end of 2023, which was reduced to six in February, and have also appealed against their two-point punishment.
i spoke to a football finance expert to find out what Forest can expect from their appeal and why they could be used as an example.
Three possible outcomes of Nottingham Forest’s FFP appeal
There appear to be three obvious possible outcomes of the Forest appeal – no change, a slight reduction in the penalty to two or three points, or an increase in the punishment.
Some fans may be hoping for a shift to a financial penalty, which you imagine is what Forest have hoped for all along, but this is virtually impossible.
Throughout the recent Everton and Forest cases, the Premier League have maintained that the only appropriate punishments for PSR breaches should be a points deduction.
An increase in the penalty is more likely, but still a long shot.
If there were to be an increase in the punishment, it would likely be on the grounds that Everton’s initial deduction was much harsher, and there is also an argument that appealing could count against the club’s previous mitigation for cooperation.
This leaves two clearer possibilities – either no change in the deduction, or a slight improvement.
In their initial case, Forest put forward six mitigation factors, and the initial independent commission reduced the proposed six-point penalty by two as a result of these.
These points for mitigation were the club’s previous excellent record with FFP rules and their cooperation with the Premier League.
Forest’s main hope was their “golden mitigation” point, based around the timing of the sale of Brennan Johnson. Johnson was sold to Tottenham for £47.5m last August, outside the necessary financial window, after the club had rejected lower offers for him earlier in the transfer window.
The initial commission rejected this appeal, a decision football finance expert Dr Rob Wilson says the appeal commission are likely to agree with.
“You understand where your PSR calculation is likely to be,” Wilson tells i. “Forest deliberately got themselves into a big hole thinking they’d be able to move Johnson out.
“It’s easy for them to say we could have sold him and been compliant if we decided earlier in the window, but they wanted to make maximum money for him.
“But the reality is they should never have had to have sold him in the first place as one of their leading assets. The fact that they put themselves under a huge amount of pressure to sell him is on them. It’s a mitigation that I understand that they would push for, it’s just not a mitigation that I think is acceptable.”
This leaves the most likely option, and the one Wilson predicts – that nothing changes. In fact, Wilson argues Forest’s biggest hope is the seeming randomness of the whole process. Due to no established guidelines for PSR punishment, each commission appears to be largely making it up as they go along.
“They have the best lawyer in the UK [Nick De Marco KC], trying to defend them,” he explains. “I just can’t imagine that they’ve left any stone unturned in that original case.
“I don’t see how anything changes, other than the fact that the commission and the Premier League appear to be making this up a little bit as they go along. On the basis of the ambiguity and the changes in the people that are sitting on the commission, why not roll the dice and see if and get a couple of points reduced?”
When Nottingham Forest can expect to hear their appeal verdict
Forest’s PSR case has been going on since mid-January, so fans are understandably eager to know when it will all be over.
As the hearing is expected to begin on 22 April, the most likely date for the final verdict is Monday 6 May.
The appeal commission can take up to seven working days to publish their verdicts, and then the club and the Premier League also get one further day after they are told before publication.
And given the previous three PSR verdicts – Forest’s initial case, Everton’s appeal and Everton’s second hearing – were all announced on a Monday having started two Mondays prior, it seems very likely the same will happen in Forest’s case.
Why Nottingham Forest’s appeal could be used as an example by the Premier League
When Forest were given a four-point deduction, it instantly seemed inevitable that they would appeal, despite this being an expensive and time-consuming process.
You cannot put forward any new evidence in an appeal, it is simply a new independent commission hearing the case for themselves.
In most well-organised systems, this is a last-ditch attempt rather than a genuine option, yet the Premier League’s lack of PSR punishment guidelines and benchmarks means it is currently just the sensible strategy.
Everton having their deduction reduced to six points from 10 on appeal is the clearest example of appeal commissions being viewed as light-touch and more likely to award a softer punishment.
Yet the Premier League will be increasingly aware of this and will be hopeful not to reinforce the precedent that appeals are an easy option to get softer penalties.
As a result, Forest could well end up being used as an example and receiving no reduction in their punishment on appeal, in order to disincentivise future appeals.
“The more the appeals are successful, the less faith we have as a public on the way to Premier League are conducting their business in terms of fairness and transparency for clubs,” Wilson says. “It almost undermines the regulations themselves, the more the appeals get heard and then get reduced.
“The reality is if they do get it reduced, what’s the point in the regulation? What was the point in the first case? Why give them four points originally when it was just going to come down on appeal?
“It paints the Premier League and the Commission’s in a pretty poor light from a governance perspective, and you can therefore see why so many people are clamouring for independent regulation or better governance.”
