Mr Vrentzos says that “This was not an offer that was capable of acceptance as we knew that Atlético de Madrid had to sell a player before it could sign Player A”. The Premier League submitted that the offer could have been accepted on the conditional basis on which it was made. Entering into a conditional agreement during FY23 which would hopefully become unconditional very shortly after the year end would have been a “true near miss” and would have constituted “very powerful” mitigation.
It's weird because the PL themselves would see that as very powerful mitigation but the IC did not. There is a chink in the armour here and DiMarco could focus on that.
We argued that the end of the transfer window was a near miss. The IC say that waiting that long disrespects the rules and "flies in the face of mitigation".
"It could categorise a sale in the summer 2023 as a “near miss”, if it was truly near to the PSR deadline or at the first available reasonable opportunity proximate to the deadline."
They are pissed off that we didn't sell to Brentford early in the window, for any money that would have put us over the threshold.
Worse still, they say,
"In the eyes of the other clubs, had Forest sold Player A within the first few weeks following the PSR deadline, this would demonstrate a willingness to comply, so why not make the “miss” as near as it could? It may have cost Forest some money, but it would have demonstrated that Forest showed some respect for the Rules, its fellow clubs and the competition and reacted as soon as it could."
I think this is a fairly weak argument given that profit and sustainability is the literal name of the rules. Maybe we thought a miss was as good as a mile over the summer. But that argument is undermined a good bit by playing him in three games of the new season.
