NFFC Financial Talk

[stirred]

I wonder if any points deduction has legal implications. Talk of Leicester, Leeds & Burnley suing. Would we be in their sights if we are found guilty of a breach, or would only a points penalty that would have kept them up put us in trouble?

If the points deduction is taken as gospel for the impact of a 'sporting advantage', then with Soton 11pts from safety for example, they have no case. If we get 3 points or less deduction we would have stayed up anyway. Even better, with Everton's deduction(s), or whatever pertains to last season, we would probably have a larger buffer than that.

Though I expect they would sue anyway and not take a given points deduction as being the definitive measure of sporting advantage. What a mess.

Fwiw last season's table:
Forest 38 pts
Everton 36 pts
Leics 34pts
Leeds 31pts
Soton 25 pts

[Salvatore Matrecano]

You do know that you're all basically saying the same things.....just some of you are looking at it from a purely legal standpoint and some of you are looking at it from a 'what makes sense' standpoint.

Missed this earlier amongst all the rival opinions.

Yes. Nail on head.

None of us know which view will prevail.

[Username]

I wonder if any points deduction has legal implications. Talk of Leicester, Leeds & Burnley suing. Would we be in their sights if we are found guilty of a breach, or would only a points penalty that would have kept them up put us in trouble?

If the points deduction is taken as gospel for the impact of a 'sporting advantage', then with Soton 11pts from safety for example, they have no case. If we get 3 points or less deduction we would have stayed up anyway. Even better, with Everton's deduction(s), or whatever pertains to last season, we would probably have a larger buffer than that.

Though I expect they would sue anyway and not take a given points deduction as being the definitive measure of sporting advantage. What a mess.

Fwiw last season's table:
Forest 38 pts
Everton 36 pts
Leics 34pts
Leeds 31pts
Soton 25 pts

You would think that from a pure politics perspective we will get deducted three points to deflate any threat of civil unrest and unwieldy legal cases being thrown about.

[stefanduma]

There is one thing certain, this forum has so many legal and financial experts that it amazes me.

One possible outcome is that this thread will exceed the January transfer thread.

Im waiting and hoping for a good outcome.

[wassy04]

There is one thing certain, this forum has so many legal and financial experts that it amazes me.

One possible outcome is that this thread will exceed the January transfer thread.

Im waiting and hoping for a good outcome.

Seems pretty logical to me. There's a group of posters that are actually qualified in accountancy or work in finance, there's another group that spend a lot of time reading through the actual legal text provided from the Everton case or the just the full rules and likely be able to draw reasonable estimates. Then there is going to be another group that do not have the background in law or finance that are reliant on either experts like Kieran Maguire or twitter or the people on here that have a finance background and can at least provide a more educated estimate to the situation based on the publicly available evidence.

I don't really see the problem of that, personally I find it really interesting so I hope the thread keeps going.

[Mcforest]

The only thing we are missing really is someone who has experience in sitting in the Panels and what kind of mind set these people have. But i agree its good to read all views.

[The reds]

So the hearing starts next Thursday and ends Friday do you reckon they announce the verdict during international break as that would be fair on every club involved as then everyone knows where they stand in all of this.

[Marco Polo]

That in itself suggests they already know the outcome. Just a. Formality

[Marinakis Red]

So the hearing starts next Thursday and ends Friday do you reckon they announce the verdict during international break as that would be fair on every club involved as then everyone knows where they stand in all of this.

I would hope so, the fact that ours is only 2 days compared to Everton's original 5 day hearing should see an outcome be announced a little quicker, but by the Premier league rules they also have it in there gift to announce it on the 8th April giving us less time to put our appeal forward as that needs to be submitted by the 15th of April.

[Marinakis Red]

That's not the question Sal, how in your opinion do you think we gained a sporting advantage over the other 19 teams in the prem last season over the 3 year rolling period? 

I know the rules and completely understand them. 

I don't agree that the championship teams have an equal chance of promotion though, because parachute payments do not equal fair opportunity. As we have seen the majority of teams promoted do have parachute payments in recent history.

Yep I know all that too and we have always complained about parachute payments for that very reason.

My point is that you are using the unequal playing field as mitigation for our breaking the rules. In my view it doesn’t apply and I don’t think it will to the panel on our hearing either.

So you think we did gain a sporting advantage ie on the pitch against those teams but cannot really conclude why?

How did we get sporting advantages against those 19 teams? Given all of the evidence against spends over 3 year rolling periods for all of those clubs?

I fully accept the breach of the rules in a financial term but not a sporting advantage term. Those 2 things are seperate.

The "sporting advantage" is gained in that we were able to make a larger loss than the other two promoted sides.

I'm afraid parachute payments (as terrible as they are) are baked in completely and not considered a sporting advantage. Teams need that money to offset losses occured in the first year in the prem on wages and transfer fees to be competitive and then offset the wages of players they are stuck with. 

I think your point is valid that it would be difficult for someone to claim we had a sporting advantage but that Parachute payments do not give them a sporting advantage. This arguably just furthers the point that the para teams have a sporting advantage.

It depends what the final amount was Wassy, if our loss is below 83m then even the promoted sides were afforded bigger losses than us too, again meaning that we gained no sporting advantage on either. 

It will be very interesting and I cannot wait to dissect the outcome verdict with a fine toothcomb and what the commission states, our appeal will then be very interesting. 

One thing to remember this is a first as it is different to Everton's purely on the amount of losses so I am kind of hoping that the verdict will be slightly different with us not breaching the top amount afforded to a premier league club. 

I agree I do enjoy reading the different takes and always interested how people are drawing their conclusions and opinions on it.

[Paplane]

I personally hope the panel will see the bigger picture and understand that in a real world situation we were at a huge sporting disadvantage and that we were only technically beyond the limit between the end of the financial year and the end of the transfer window, ie they'll be sympathetic to our 'mitigations'. What I suspect is that we'll get a straight down the line, rules are rules type judgement, and have to suck up a 6pts hit.

[BadDog]

I personally hope the panel will see the bigger picture and understand that in a real world situation we were at a huge sporting disadvantage and that we were only technically beyond the limit between the end of the financial year and the end of the transfer window, ie they'll be sympathetic to our 'mitigations'. What I suspect is that we'll get a straight down the line, rules are rules type judgement, and have to suck up a 6pts hit.

I just don't see any world in which we get 6 points.