Nottingham Forest are at a critical point, with the future of the club at the City Ground hanging in the balance.
Nottingham Forest have been told that any decision to leave the City Ground could result in the same punishment as Everton for violating the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
Talk of expanding the present site began in 2019, but owner Evangelos Marinakis now looks to be set on moving to ‘a bigger facility’.
It’s a heated discussion, and Forest may easily end themselves on the wrong side of it if they get it wrong, cautions football financial expert Kieran Maguire.
“The nuclear option as far as the club is concerned is to effectively walk away and move to a new stadium,” he told Football Insider. “That would be an extremely expensive operation, given the enormous increase in building and labor costs in the post-Brexit environment.
“As we saw with Everton, higher material costs, power expenses, and transportation fees make constructing a new stadium an expensive endeavor. But if the Forest Board believes that the council is being unreasonable, this is an alternative that they must explore.”
Both the Reds and the Toffees have received point deductions due to the league’s PSR. In Forest’s situation, it came down to surpassing the maximum loss.
Everton’s initial 10-point punishment, which was later reduced to six on appeal, was for the same offense, but it included various difficulties, such as the expense of funding the construction of their 52,888-seater facility on Liverpool’s waterfront.
The stadium, which is scheduled to open in time for the 2025/26 season, is expected to cost £500 million. As Forest considers moving to a new site while expecting to put their Financial Fair Play issues behind them, Maguire’s caution appears to be sound advice.
