ClaphamFox

It will be dependent on the level of breach. If we’re significantly above Everton’s, we could get docked more points. The charges against Man City are much more serious. They will be relegated found guilty, but the process is likely to take years.

Sorry - has there been a new development today re: FFP/PSR rules?

Any club outside of the top six is one bad managerial appointment or injury crisis away from a bad season resulting in relegation. If you've been building a squad to compete in Europe then suddenly find yourself in the Championship, it's going to be incredibly difficult to sell enough players at the right kind of prices to stay within the rules. The alternative is to always remain ultra-cautious while in the PL and accept an upper ceiling on what you can realistically achieve, which may suit the big six clubs but won't be very exciting for the rest of us. We just need to get promoted and hope that the punishment doesn't make survival next season impossible. Anything above an eight-point deduction would effectively be a relegation sentence. It'll be a long season if that happens....

Will do. Was this broadcast live? I had a look last night but couldn't see anything...

Sound advice - that's clearly the right way to approach it. And anybody who succeeds in just forgetting about it until there's concrete news has my full respect and admiration. It's just a shame I won't be one of them.

Is anybody else slightly nervous that our 2020-2023 breach could significantly exceed Everton's and give the PL the opportunity to throw the book at us? According to reports, there is near-unanimous perception in the game that we've breached for that period, which makes me think that it might be a significant one. John Percy's comment last week that the PL are looking to hit us with a 'heavy' points deduction would seem to back this up. Am I just being paranoid?!

I've spent the past couple of days trying to bend my middle finger around my fourth finger like Prince Louis without using my other hand to push it into place (which feels like cheating). No success so far. I'll update if anything changes.

An article on Nyoni has been posted on LeicestershireLive this morning. It's fairly informative except in one important respect - it doesn't say when the tribunal will be taking place: https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/no-one-gets-see-it-9140212

It has been reported that if we get promoted while being in breach for the two periods ending 30 June 2023 and 30 June 2024, we won’t face two separate points deductions next season, but rather a points deduction for the 2020-2023 breach and a fine for the 2021-2024 breach. If that‘s the case, is it possible that the club may just decide it isn’t worth trying to avoid the second breach and just take the hit on the fine?

Nor Winks, KDH, Mavididi or Vardy.

2-3!

They’re from the gold mining company we’ve just pumped all of our available cash into. They’ve guaranteed us a very handsome profit before the end of June, which should help us out with FFP etc. It was a great opportunity to be fair - something to do with a prince being exiled and being unable to access his wealth or something…

I didn’t like this sentence in the John Percy article: “The Premier League is believed to be recommending a big points deduction as punishment, which would have a serious impact on their season.” How big?! Do they want to punish us more than Everton and Forest?

I wonder if the KP will cease to be the KP before the end of the season, and become something like the Thai Airways Stadium? Likewise I wonder if our shirts may start bearing a different sponsor's name before the end of the season, or even if Seagrave might become a sponsored training ground...

True, but our relegation at the end of the period ending June 2023 is less ambiguous and has muddied the waters. Dr Dan Plumley, the Sheffield Hallam football finance expert who was on Radio Leicester last night, was basically saying that we're something of a test case in this regard. Our arguments will not have been heard or tested before, so it's very hard to predict how things will pan out. Our case is not the same as Everton's or Forest's, both of whom gained from their overspends. I get the feeling that either the authorities will try to get around this situation by persuading us to accept a lesser punishment, or they'll try to go hard on us and our case will end up being dragged into the courts, which may take years to resolve.

This is what Blackwell writes: "Because the finances for the 22-23 season have not yet been made public, it is still not clear if City are within PSR for the three years up to June 2023. Over the previous two campaigns, City lost a combined £120.5m, and so would need to make a profit of more than £20m to be under the allowable losses of £105m. "However, within that, some spending is not factored in, such as that for infrastructure or on the academy. So City’s three-year losses may exceed £105m but they could be within the threshold and avoid punishment." He explicitly references the difference between financial results and PSR/FFP.

Yeah, fan protests are exactly what we need when we’re pushing for what would be the most important promotion in our history.

So in summary, we potentially face charges for two separate periods: 1) The three-year period ending June 2023, which ended in our relegation. We’ll find out about this very soon as our accounts for 2022/23 are about to be published and the PL is, according to reports, preparing to charge us next week. However, at the hearing we will argue, with some justification, that we made more of an effort than some of our rivals to stay within the rules and that we got relegated as a result, so we’ve already been punished for this. 2) The three-year period ending June 2024. For this charge - if it comes - we will argue that the FL should not be looking at the previous two seasons because they were under a different set of rules (ie, a higher overspend limit) and that we did not know when we overspent in 2021/22 that we would face a much lower limit in a couple of seasons’ time. In addition, as the current financial period has more than three months to run, we can still potentially avoid a charge by generating additional income before June 30. On the Radio Leicester podcast last night they had a football finance expert on from Sheffield Hallam University. After listening to him I felt marginally more positive that, at the very least, we’ll have reasonably strong arguments in both of the above cases. They’re not quite as open and shut as I originally feared. I really hope we’ve employed the best lawyers in the land to work with us on this.

A little premature given that we haven’t breached for this season and may still not.

I’m sure we’ll be making this point at our hearing. We made a serious effort to bring down costs and comply with the rules, and ended up getting relegated for our trouble. In the meantime, Everton and Forest spent way more than we did and stayed up. Everton and Forest are now being punished for spending too much, but the PL also want to punish us again even though we’ve already effectively been punished once through relegation. The moral of the story is that it’s better to ignore the spending rules if doing so helps you to avoid relegation. If you try to comply but fall short and then get relegated anyway, they’ll come after you with a points deduction on top - except you’ll be in a much worse position to recover from it because you’ve been financially weakened by relegation.

Not disagreeing, but that article does not reveal anything new. It seems that our hopes depend wholly on our 22/23 accounts being vastly more healthy than the entire footballing world expects them to be. I do hope we have employed some half-decent accountants and lawyers.

Here's the link to this story: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/leicester-city-sale-financial-breaches-points-deduction-championship-5mh07hjfc They're presenting it as a new development, but in reality it's just a rehash of what we already know. When we submit our accounts for 2022/23 later this month, the PL MIGHT charge us for breaking the rules IF our accounts over the past three years show we are in breach.

Are we allowed to just not do one? I thought they were mandatory…

If the club believed we were likely to exceed the £13m loss this year and this was widely known (as it apparently was), it explains why Brighton were apparently so surprised that we knocked back their offer for KDH in January. They expected us to take it because they believed we were desperate for the cash, as apparently did the journalist David Ornstein. Then when we turned them down other journalists (Dorsett, Tanner, etc) started pushing a different line - ie, that although we were 'constrained' financially, we did not have to sell KDH to meet P&S rules. So were Brighton and Ornstein right after all, or are we still confident about complying for the current financial year?

This is correct.