Jackie Broon

I wondered for a while whether the "legally binding assurances" we gave to the PL before they allowed the takeover could have included some sort of commitment that we would play nice and not legally challenge the FFP rules, and we're trying to nudge other clubs towalds doing that.

I think it's based the money the bottom club gets from the PL, rather than the total revenue of the bottom club.

Nope, the High Court only had jurisdiction over the arbitration process around disclosure of documents because it was under the Arbitration Act. Man City's only route if they lose a PL appeal would probably be to challenge the legality of the Profit and Sustainability rules themselves under competition law, which would be via the Competition Appeals Tribunal. However, they'd have to argue that they're anti-competitive in that they keep the top 6 a closed shop, Man City benefits from that, would they really want them to be set aside? Unless the club is going to be relegated I think they might just take the punishment if they lose an appeal through the PL process. I hope they do successfully challenge the rules though, because we'd probably be the biggest beneficiaries of that.

Nope, the appeal would be to an appeal panel as set out in the PL's rules. Man City went to the High Court in 2021 to challenge the PL's juristiction to force them to formally disclose documents, and lost. The documents the PL wanted access to were probably documents that the PL already knew existed through the leaked emails, like this one: Most of us are expecting we're going to try to do the same kind of thing, but won't be daft enough to put it in emails and allow them to be hacked. If we were caught red handed I think most would say "fair cop" rather than blindly claiming our club is innocent, I certainly would.

There's only one United on this forum.

They've put in £400m on the books already, plus potentially other off the books stuff like the Sela Adidas partnership and associated party sponsorships. If we are an investment we're probably past the peak already, and they'd currently need to get £700m just to break even on the on the books investment.

I'm sure FMV rules will remain in place but it's the detail of those rules, how fair market value is assessed, that is important.

It really depends on the FMV rules though, if they are relaxed it would make it much easier for us to grow our revenue. We've voted against every other change to the FFP rules since the takeover as far as I'm aware, if we've voted for this change there's likely to be something advantageous in there for us.

Game over for what? We're clearly operating within the rules, the club obviously have no intention of just breaching them and taking the punishment. The goal is and always has been to grow our revenue to the point where we can compete financially with the top 6.

Where have you got it from that there would be no acceptable losses? The UEFA rules, which the PL will apparently mirror, have allowable losses of up to £78m over 3 years, which is slightly lower than the PL's current £115 over 3 years but it's not no losses. The likelihood is we've been working to the UEFA rules anyway, because we'll be aiming to be in Europe every year. The devil is going to be in the detail of what we can get away with in terms of related party sponsorships.

Nothing new or unusual, it's the seventh time they've done that: 07/10/2021 - £89.4m 09/11/2021 - £38.5m 24/01/2022 - £40m 26/10/2022 - £70.4m 10/02/2023 - £57m 22/08/2023 - £60m

No, the club runs at a loss so they need to inject money to cover that. They've periodically done that since the takeover, totalling about £400m.

And ticket prices, our most expensive season tickets are about the same as their cheapest.

Not as a result of the football regulator, even if they got rid the the PL's FFP rules clubs in europe would still be subject to UEFA's. The only way would be is if there's a successful challenge of the FFP rules which affects both the PL and UEFA rules. Even then, it would probably result in them changing the rules so they allow more scope to allow clubs to catch-up than it being a free-for-all.

Is this what you're referring to, at 8:50? She was responding to a question about where she wants to see us long term, Keith Downie says 5-10 years but she clearly isn't putting a timescale on it in her response. Across the whole interview she's actually pretty measured and talks about it being a long term investment, the need for patience and to work within FFP.

That's kind of my original point, I was replying to a suggestion that NDM being involved means we're dictating it from the background. Which it doesn't, Forest have just engaged one of the best from a very small pool.

It applies to all areas of law that barristers practice in as far as I'm aware. It's the other way around, the club can engage whoever they want but a barrister has to accept if they are free and it's within their knowledge and expertise.

Maybe, but NDM being involved doesn't mean anything specifically. There'll be a very limited pool of sport's law specialist barristers and the cab rank rule means they don't get to choose who appoints them.

They have a massive advantage from being in London. Also, timing is everything, if it hadn't been for us being terribly run post stock market floatation there would be a big 7 rather than a big 6, catching up now is a very different prospect.

But there is absolutely no indication that's the case. Even if we sell Bruno for £100m in the summer we're pretty unlikely to find another £100m player for £40m. Every other club is competing in the same market with the same aim, there's no way to guarantee that a club makes a profit from transfers on the scale that would be needed (possibly other than through the academy as Chelsea have, but there's not much indication that we're going down that route in a big way). Eales has talked about possibly selling to free up FFP headroom, but that is a temporary measure that essentially brings forward future revenue growth, not something to grow revenue itself. Being realistic the only way our commercial income will continue to increase is if it is inflated in some way. We're not going to catch up just by being a well run club, there needs to be some way for PIF to get around FFP. The Adidas / Sela partnership smells of that, but if that is going on in the background it most of it won't be that visible. If not we'll just be a much better run club than we were under Ashley and be at the top of the pack of also-rans, and that's fine.

How would we do that with player trading? Will we be able to bridge the gap by growing commercial income? I don't know, but we won't really have a proper indication of that until the next few sets of accounts are published. We all agree the FFP rules are just there to protect the established order, there's fuck all we can do about it so there's no point calling people bots out of frustration at that

There's nothing to suggest that player trading will be our growth model, we might benefit from selling players in the short term but that would essentially be a way of bringing forward future revenue growth, not a growth model in itself. Everything suggests the plan is to increase our commercial income.

Related party sponsors are not our only way, would we have got a £40m per season deal with Adidas without the 'strategic partnership' with Sela? Spurs' Nike deal is apparently £30m per season (although might have increased since they signed it in 2019) and Villa's Adidas deal is reported to be £12m.

This discussion seems to assume that the Freemen would stand in the way of a stadium on part of the Town Moor. The Freemen supported the Castle Leazes proposal in 1997, so there's nothing to suggest they wouldn't again, or on a different part of the Town Moor.

Nope.