ClaphamFox

The Lawyer article in full. It doesn’t reveal much, but as I suspected we’re not challenging the PL’s arbitration over 23/24. The Premier League has instructed magic circle firm Linklaters to bring new charges against football club Leicester City for breaches of financial fair play rules. Linklaters’ co-head of international arbitration Ben Carroll will pursue the club for alleged breaches of the English Football League’s (EFL) Profitability and Sustainability (P&S Rules) in 2023/24. The League has also charged the club with failing to provide its annual accounts to the Premier League by the end of last year, and failing to give “full, complete and prompt assistance” to the League in response to its inquiries. The Lawyer understands that Blackstone Chambers barristers Nick De Marco KC and David Lowe will defend Leicester City. Stuart Baird, a partner at sports boutique Centrefield, has previously been instructed on the matter, but declined to comment on whether he is instructed on the new case. The news caps off what has been a tough year for the 2016 Premier League champions. After being relegated to the Championship in 2023, the club fought their way back up to the Premier League last year, but its poor performance this season will see it relegated for the second time in three seasons. The charges came as the Premier League confirmed it had secretly launched an arbitration in October last year, seeking to overturn the decision of an appeal tribunal in August 2024. In that same arbitration, it also sought to establish jurisdiction to investigate and charge the club over potential breaches of the P&S Rules for 2023/24, despite the fact that the club was in the Championship in that season. The appeal tribunal last year ruled that the Premier League did not have jurisdiction to bring disciplinary proceedings against Leicester over its 2022/23 financial losses, because it had been relegated to the Championship and was no longer subject to the Premier League’s rules at the relevant time. The Lawyer revealed in October that the Premier League was considering challenging the appeal decision to an arbitration panel. The League had responded to the decision saying that it “created a situation where any club exceeding the [Profitability and Sustainability Rules] threshold could avoid accountability in these specific circumstances. This is clearly not the intention of the rules.” Initially, the club had challenged the new panel’s jurisdiction to hear the case, but was unsuccessful. In what was essentially a dispute about the rules of contractual interpretation, the two sides appeared before a panel of some of the leading contract jurists of the day: former Supreme Court justices Lord Mance of 7KBW and Lord Neuberger of One Essex Court, and Fountain Court’s Michael Crane KC. Instructing Linklaters and One Essex Court’s Connall Patton KC to bring the challenge, the League convinced the panel that the appeal tribunal’s decision was wrong. However, Leicester City’s lead counsel, Blackstone Chambers Tim Otty KC, instructed by Centrefield, successfully argued the decision should not be overturned because it did not meet the high threshold of being a “perverse interpretation of the law.” The panel did further rule that the League does have jurisdiction to investigate and charge Leicester City over the following 2023/24 season.

I don’t entirely trust the Chat GPT summary.

We’re not necessarily arguing about the jurisdiction.

Why do I get the feeling that we’ve got some legal arguments up our sleeve that will make this one just as complicated as our previous dealings with the PL and EFL?

Return of De Marc! (There it is) Return of De Marc! (Come on) Return of De Marc! (Oh my God) You know that he’ll be back! We lied to them…

I doubt it. If they'd already reached an agreement, a better response to this line of questioning would be "I've agreed that I'll sit down with the club at the end of the season discuss our options. Until then I'm just focused on this season." Repeatedly saying, "I want clarity but the club won't sit down with me" makes the club look really bad. There is no way that is an agreed strategy. They really haven't told him yet.

Not at all. Whelan emailed the accounts to her assistant Debbie on the 19th with a note saying, "Send this to the PL when you get a chance, Debs" - forgetting that Debbie had started her Christmas annual leave the day before. Whelan realised this when Debbie's out of office reply came through and tried to forward it to another member of the admin team, but she spelt her name wrong and it bounced back. At this point Whelan decided that nothing could realistically be done until the New Year and the PL wouldn't mind because who wants to look at a silly old accounts doc a few days before Christmas? And she definitely intended to sort it out as soon as she got back to the office in January, but what with one thing and another she forgot and only finally got around to sending it to the PL after they had emailed us eight times and left seven voicemail messages. See? Not our fault at all. Nothing we could do about it.

Everything you say makes sense. I just find it surprising that Maguire, who is widely regarded as one of the biggest experts on football finance, has such a different take on this issue to everybody else. I listened to his Radio Leicester comments again earlier. When asked whether the recent closing of the 'Leicester loophole' would make this case more straightforward, he replied 'not necessarily' and suggested that the PL might try to use our case to set a precedent for future cases rather than to try to impose a deduction on us next season. As mentioned previously, he also highlighted that Ipswich and possibly Southampton will argue that any deduction should be imposed this season because it could affect them financially. As much as I'd like Maguire to be right, I'm leaning towards the view that he's probably mistaken as he seems to be the only one saying it. However, it would be odd for somebody who makes his living from being a football finance expert should get it so wrong.

Yes, it's this bit that he seems to disagree with. He apparently thinks that while jurisdiction can move between the two bodies to follow a promoted or relegated club, any punishment imposed by a PL IC must be implemented in the PL - ie, jurisdiction can't just be passed back down to the EFL. He was on Radio Leicester again tonight, saying more or less the same thing. The only colour he added was that under PL rules we are supposed to be punished this season and that Ipswich and possibly Southampton could have a legitimate grievance if our punishment was pushed into next season and they missed out on PL prize money from this season as a result.

My impression was that Maguire believes that if a club breaches in the Championship and then gets promoted, jurisdiction can be transferred to a PL IC but any subsequent sanction cannot follow that club back to the Championship if it gets relegated immediately. He didn't seem to think the PL could just transfer jurisdiction back to the EFL to administer the punishment. He may well be wrong - he certainly seems to be a bit of an outlier in his interpretation. But that is what he seems to believe - and he seems pretty sure of it, too.

Yes, but the EFL now cannot charge us for the 23/24 period because the PL won its argument that it has jurisdiction over that period and has charged us. We can't be charged twice for the same season by the PL and the EFL. He did say that the EFL will be all over us like a rash next season and that we won't get away with refusing to submit our accounts in October like we did the last time we were in the Championship.

Maybe the club knows that the PL cannot impose a points deduction on us next season and will inform him of that?

I've just listened to Kieran Maguire's latest podcast. In it, he reiterates his belief that the PL cannot impose a points deduction on us next season. He reckons that the recent agreement between the PL and the EFL only allows for jurisdiction to be passed from one to the other if a club is promoted or relegated, but does not extend to allowing punishments to be imposed between the PL and EFL. In other words, according to Maguire, while the PL can gain jurisdiction over a club that breached in the Championship, it can only impose a sanction on that club while it is in the PL - ie, the points deduction cannot be passed back down. This runs contrary to what the majority of the media has been reporting, but Maguire seems pretty certain about it. He reckons the PL is going after us now in an attempt to impose a points deduction on us this season and move us down 1-2 places, reducing our prize money and increasing that paid to Ipswich and/or Southampton.

I think it's highly likely they haven't decided yet.

Didn't the club back down from appointing Jesse Marsch because of the negative reaction from the fans? I know he claims he was offered it and turned it down, but I remember reports at the time suggesting the club got cold feet when it saw the reaction on social media...

Possibly because there wasn't a decent replacement available and they didn't to saddle King or Barry-Murphy with a relegation and a depressed squad, so decided to let things run their natural course with RVN?

Won't the fact that we won our appeal initially be regarded by the Commission as evidence that our case was at least arguable? In other words, our appeal wasn't a frivolous one designed to delay proceedings, but rather a reasonable one that stood a chance of success (and indeed was initially successful)? It's a minor point perhaps, but could influence the level of deduction by a point or two.

Don’t be silly. I know we’re all unhappy at the moment, but stuff like this is just daft.

If it’s down to those two, surely we’ve got to Rohl with it?

News emerges that when we posted our late accounts to the Premier League, Rudkin had wiped his arse on them and written ‘C U in court, losers!’ in red marker pen over the top. This has only made the PL even more determined to go after us, according to reports.

We’re always up to summat, ain’t we? We’re a bit wooh! We’re a bit waay! We’re dodgy! We’re geezers!

Presumably it wasn’t the PL that decided the timing, but the arbitration panel that was deciding on the PL’s appeal.

Potter was reportedly dithering and Top got fed up. I’m also not remotely convinced Marsch was offered it.

I don’t think anybody has forgotten that.

I’m clinging onto the fact that the fat lady has not sung yet. Graham Potter, Scott Parker and Jesse Marsch have all previously been reported as being basically in the door and none materialised in the end. There is hope, people!