Why Man City are mentioned in Nottingham Forest FFP decision as potential punishment outlined

In order to punish Nottingham Forest for violating the criteria of profit and sustainability, the Premier League has deducted four points from their total.

Manchester City is mentioned twice in the fifty-page ruling that the Premier League has handed down over Nottingham Forest’s financial accusations; nevertheless, the explanation that many fans of the opposing team will hope for is not given.

Following Forest’s admission that they had violated the Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), they were penalized with four points, which placed them in the Premier League’s relegation zone. They argued that they had violated the regulations because of the extraordinary circumstances that surrounded the sale of Brennan Johnson to Tottenham, and they opposed the decision to charge them.

There are 115 alleged violations that are scheduled to be heard by an independent commission for a wide variety of claims spanning from 2009/10 to 2017/18. City is subject to their own charges that have been brought against them by the Premier League. In the midst of rival supporters queuing up to inquire about the reason why City are not being dealt with sooner, the mention of City in the Forest verdict is sure to cause excitement. However, it is expected that the most recent development does not provide any additional information regarding City’s case.

It was discovered that Forest had violated the PSR regulations, which set a limit on the amount of money that clubs can lose in a single year. They acknowledged that they had beyond that limit by the time the deadline came around in June 2023, but they had chosen Johnson as a player who could be sold for their valuation of fifty million pounds in order to ensure that they remained below the threshold.

They waited until the day of the transfer deadline, which was September 1st, 2023, to sell Johnson to Spurs for a price of £47.5 million. They said that by doing so, they were acting in accordance with the rules, which resulted in a more sustainable fee. If they had complied with the deadline, they would have only generated approximately £30 million.

The city comes into play at this point. For the purpose of demonstrating that they were making concerted efforts to sell Johnson, Forest stated that they “continued to seek out buyers,” talking to six other teams, one of whom was City.

“Forest submitted that by 30 June 2023, it had made every effort to generate a formal offer for Player A [Johnson] but none had been received at that stage that were capable of being completed in time,” according to the court judgment.

In a later section of the report, it is said that “the Commission could see that some efforts were made in May and June 2023 to sell [Johnson], but no acceptable offers were made in time.” According to the information provided by Mr. Vrentzos, who was formerly the CEO of Forest, there were some negotiations with teams such as Manchester City, Crystal Palace, and [Johnson’s] new agency.

However, in contrast, a section of Forest’s defense to prove mitigation saw them compare themselves to Everton’s case, which saw them punished 10 points for breaching PSR restrictions, which was eventually reduced to six points. These are the only two mentions of City that are included in the ruling.

“They are very different charges,” the Chief Executive Officer of the Premier League, Richard Masters, stated in a recent statement to a Parliamentary Select Committee. If any club, regardless of whether they are the current champions or not, had been discovered to have violated the spending regulations for the year ’23, they would have been in the exact same position as Everton or Nottingham Forest.

On the other hand, the verdict might provide some insight into the kind of penalty the City might be subjected to in the event that they were found guilty of violating PSR regulations, which is the subject of two of their 115 allegations. Everton and Forest were judged to have violated Premier League regulation E.51, which pertains to the maximum amount of money that a club can lose in a single fiscal year. City, on the other hand, has been charged with violating this particular rule for the 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons.

In the course of Everton’s appeal against their points deduction, which was included in the Forest ruling, the Premier League stated that “only a points deduction is acceptable for a breach of regulation E.51… Any violation of rule E.51 is a matter of paramount importance. It most certainly provides the club that is in violation with an unfair sporting edge as well as a revenue advantage that corresponds to it.

“In our opinion, the only thing that has the proper force of disincentive for clubs to stay inside the upper loss threshold required to preserve the goal of an FFP regime is a points deduction, which has an effect that is both immediate and overt. Additionally, in our opinion, it addresses both the financial and sporting components in the most acceptable manner.

Additionally, the league contends that “an immediate deduction is appropriate in PSR cases,” which provides City with an indication of the potential punishment that could be imposed in the event that those particular claims were determined to be true. However, given that they are facing 115 counts, City would anticipate a hefty punishment nonetheless, which would most likely include a reduction in points, in the event that they were found guilty; therefore, this is not a particularly significant development.

Asserting that they had a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position,” City has expressed their satisfaction with the independent commission that has been assigned the responsibility of handling their case. They believe that this will result in the subject “being put to rest once and for all.”