Welcome to the future of the Premier League, where destinies are decided by points deductions, the table is never quite as it seems and your club’s star is not the manager or striker but the super silk fighting your corner in the courtroom.
In the Monday morning fan forums and WhatsApp groups fans debate the upcoming fixtures, assess injury lists, analyse form of key players. They compare their own troubles to that of relegation or European rivals.
Now, however, there will be a whole new layer to the formulas and anxieties.
They will need to factor in the pending charges against the team two points ahead of them in safety, the status of the appeals, the likelihood of success. There will be speculation about if they will lose points, and how many. And how that changes the points required to survive.
Everton seem well clear of the bottom three now but, actually, if the Premier League deduct another 10 points for a second infraction they will be plunged right back in it. The authorities threw the book at them hard last time – will they tie a brick to it for a successive breach?
The perceived bias and unfairness of the financial breaches will spawn new branches of hysteria and argument. Sums will be messily scribbled on the back of vape packets, questions will be asked furiously about why other teams are not being punished, or why theirs was penalised so harshly.
Fantasy football might have to be updated to include a choice of lawyer, awarded sizeable points for successful defences.
Fans will eagerly scan the Legal 500 to find out where their latest lawyer ranks. Are they on the illustrious Tier 1 list? Will it be Nick De Marco KC, named “Sports Silk of the Year” at the Legal 500 Bar Awards 2022?
Or the “highly sought-after” Paul Harris KC, who was part of the team that successfully mounted Manchester City’s appeal against Uefa’s decision to ban them from the Champions League in the Court of Arbitration for Sport? Harris “relishes the cut and thrust of commercial litigation”, according to legal experts.
Or it could be Jane Mulcahy KC? She has represented Kieran Trippier and Daniel Sturridge when the Football Association charged them with betting offences. Mulcahy is at the “top of her game”, “razor-sharp on the facts”, “hugely compelling throughout cross-examination”.
Silks can charge around £5,000 per hour for their services, which, say these barristers work a normal 9-5, would be around £200,000 per week. To put that into context: Newcastle United’s latest accounts revealed the average salary of a Premier League player to be £95,000 per week.
Meanwhile, everyone is looking enviously at the man in charge of City’s latest legal fight, against more than 100 financial breaches, this time with the Premier League; Lord Pannick KC – the Kevin De Bruyne of the legal world.
Lord Pannick, according to reports, has been known to charge £8,000 per hour.
“If he were paid at the top end of that scale, come the trial when he is working full-time, Pannick could be paid £80,000 a day, or £400,000 a week – the same as Kevin De Bruyne,” The Lawyer, an award-winning legal news website, reported.
Does there reach a point where lawyers defending a club against breaches of the profit and sustainability regulations (PSR) cause them to be in breach of the following season’s regulations? Better hire some more lawyers to prepare a defence.
Nottingham Forest and Everton, for a second time, are facing possible charges for financial breaches for sailing close to the wind. A points deduction could be fatal to Forest’s chances of survival.
Clearly seeing in which the direction the storm is blowing, Everton – shocked by the first “wholly disproportionate and unjust” 10-point punishment that was, somewhat confusingly, harsher than when Portsmouth went into administration – recently added to their legal armoury by appointing Laurence Rabinowitz KC, described as a “super silk”, to the team fighting their appeal.
In the remainder of the season, if Sean Dyche steers Everton to around mid-table we could reach a point towards its conclusion when fans will be unsure if a further deduction will thrust them towards relegation, or if the 10 points is quashed and they can dream of Europe.
