There is no celebration at the City Ground, and no gloating over the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision which favours Nottingham Forest over Crystal Palace.
In fact, there is great sympathy for Steve Parish and Palace’s plight – despite the undeniable fact it is a huge boost for Forest’s season, and their spending power.
The implications of CAS’s call are huge for Forest, who had put much of their transfer business on hold pending the outcome of the case.
Why? Because Europa League qualification could mean an extra £50m in the Forest coffers, if they go all the way to winning the trophy in May.
Forest’s owner Evangelos Marinakis is expected to now sanction a number of high-profile transfers – starting with the £20m+ signing of James McAtee, which Forest hope to have signed and sealed in time for him to be in the squad for the Premier League season-opener against Brentford on Sunday.
Forest’s hierarchy never saw this as a dispute between themselves and Palace. In fact, they are adamant that the legal battle was between Palace and UEFA, with Forest on the sidelines, and that they only made legal submissions to the CAS hearing because they were forced to do so, after Palace named them officially in the court as “respondents”.
However, it is also true that Forest wrote a letter to UEFA early on in the process asking for clarity over the multi-club ownership rules, and asking for the decision-making to be completed as soon as possible. The underlying sentiment was clearly: we followed UEFA’s rules, Palace didn’t.
Forest, of course, had their own clash with UEFA’s multi-club ownership rules because Marinakis owns and runs both Forest and Olympiacos. There’s no hiding from that fact, with both clubs operating very openly with his considerable character at the helm.
Up until the final game of the season, Forest looked like they would qualify for the Champions League, and Olympiacos had already done so. A clear conflict of interest, and one that breaches UEFA’s rules to ensure fair and legitimate competition. As the higher-ranked club, Olympiacos would have taken precedent and taken the Champions League spot.
As a result of that risk, and in time with the UEFA deadline of March 1 (Forest insist) Marinakis relinquished day-to-day control of the East Midlands club and put all of his shares into a blind trust. Three new members of the board were appointed to replace him. That, Forest were confident, would have staved off any risk of a conflict of interest, and satisfied UEFA.
Palace actually claimed in their submissions to CAS that Forest had missed the UEFA deadline and only put Marinakis’ shares in a blind trust on April 30. Forest dispute that, and say it’s irrelevant anyway, because this isn’t a legal battle between Forest and UEFA, it’s a legal dispute between Palace and UEFA.
Highlights from the first-ever Premier League match on Sky between Nottingham Forest and Liverpool
As it happened, Nuno Espirito Santo’s team missed out on Champions League qualification on the final day, with defeat at home by Chelsea, so the conflict of interest with Olympiacos in the same UEFA competition never occurred. Marinakis has once again taken back his shares, and full control of Nottingham Forest.
And it is clear, post CAS, that he will now sanction further transfer spending. Tottenham earned a total of around £120m in winning the Europa League last season (with additional extra riches which will come from being involved in this season’s Champions League).
Some £35m of that was prize money, the rest came from the extra matchday revenue and additional commercial funds. The prize money alone is worth almost double in the Europa League compared with what Forest might have accrued in the UEFA Conference League, and that fact has encouraged Marinakis to loosen the purse strings.
The League phase for the Europa League will be drawn in Monaco on August 29, with 36 competing teams – of which Forest will be one, alongside clubs including Aston Villa, Roma, Bologna, Lyon, Porto, and Real Betis.
Forest will now look to that date with excitement and expectation, and a re-invigorated transfer kitty to bolster Nuno Espirito Santo’s resources.
