Culture
Forest handed four-point deduction for breaching Premier League's financial rules
Nottingham Forest have been handed a four-point deduction following a breach of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSRs).
Forest were referred to an independent commission in January after the club reported losses that exceeded the allowed amount over the three-year reporting cycle ending in the 2022-23 season.
Under the guidelines, they could have been fined or deducted points for the breach, and their four-point deduction now drops them to 18th in the Premier League.
The new Premier League table
They are the second Premier League team this season to be deducted points following a PSR breach after Everton had 10 points docked in November. This was later reduced to six points following a three-day appeal. Everton could face a second points deduction this season after they were charged alongside Forest with another breach of PSR rules in January.
Forest now have seven days to notify whether they intend to appeal against the sanction.
The Premier League has pencilled in May 24 as a backstop date for any appeal which comes after the end of the season on May 19. This date comes ahead of the league’s annual general meeting.
What did the Premier League say?
A statement read: “An independent commission has applied an immediate four-point deduction to Nottingham Forest FC for a breach of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSRs) for the period ending season 2022/23.
“Nottingham Forest was referred to an independent commission on January 15, following an admission by the club that it had breached the relevant PSR threshold of £61million by £34.5m.
“The threshold was lower than £105m as the club spent two seasons of the assessment period in the EFL Championship. The case was heard in accordance with new Premier League Rules, which provide an expedited timetable for PSR cases to be resolved in the same season the complaint is issued.
“The independent commission determined the sanction following a two-day hearing this month, at which the club had the opportunity to detail a range of mitigating factors.
“The commission found that the club had demonstrated ‘exceptional cooperation’ in its dealings with the Premier League throughout the process.”
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What did Forest say?
A club statement read: “Nottingham Forest is extremely disappointed with the decision of the commission to impose a sanction on the club of four points, to be applied with immediate effect.”
“We were extremely dismayed by the tone and content of the Premier League’s submissions before the commission,” it added. “After months of engagement with the Premier League, and exceptional cooperation throughout, this was unexpected and has harmed the trust and confidence we had in the Premier League.”
Club statement.
— Nottingham Forest (@NFFC) March 18, 2024
The club also called the Premier League’s initial starting point for a sanction of eight points as “utterly disproportionate” and pointed to a number of “unique circumstances” involved and the mitigation they put forward.
They also said the commission’s decision “raises issues of concern for all aspirant clubs” and that the rationale that clubs should only invest after they have realised a profit on their player development “destroys mobility in the football pyramid” and will lead to “the stagnation of our national game.”
“We believe that the high levels of cooperation the club has shown during this process, and which are confirmed and recorded in the commission’s decision, were not reciprocated by the Premier League,” the statement added.
How did we get here?
Forest were referred to the commission by the Premier League in January for the alleged breach, which concerns the PSR calculation for the three-year reporting period ending with the 2022-23 season.
Forest stated they would “continue to cooperate fully with the Premier League on this matter and are confident of a speedy and fair resolution”.
Forest have signed more than 40 players since securing promotion in May 2022, with owner Evangelos Marinakis sanctioning a transfer spend of around £250m ($318m) to help the club establish themselves in the top flight.
Forest believed they had worked within the regulations when it came to the allowable losses with a lot of the issue centring around Brennan Johnson’s sale to Tottenham Hotspur.
Johnson’s sale to Tottenham was key to Forest’s argument (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
The club’s argument — which they have made in conversations with the Premier League — was that they could have sold Johnson earlier in the window but doing so at that point would have meant accepting a markedly lower price. His sale did not go through until September 1, well after the financial year ended, for £47.5m.
New guidelines aimed at fast-tracking PSR decisions have been introduced to ensure any basic breaches of the regulations are dealt with in time for punishments, such as points deductions, to be levied in the same season as the charge is brought.
All clubs had to submit their accounts for 2022-23 by December 31 — rather than in March as they had previously — with any breaches and subsequent charges confirmed 14 days later.
What are profitability and sustainability rules?
All Premier League clubs are assessed for their adherence to the competition’s profitability and sustainability rules each year.
Their compliance with said rules is assessed by reference to the club’s PSR calculation, which is the aggregate of its adjusted earnings before tax for the relevant assessment period.
Under the PSR, clubs are allowed to lose a maximum of £105m over three seasons (or £35m a season) but certain costs can be deducted, such as investment in youth development, infrastructure, community and women’s football.
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There were also specific allowances relating to COVID and, to help clubs, the league combined the two pandemic-hit seasons into one, turning the three-year accounting period into four years.
Forest’s permitted losses are lower than the £105m limit because the club were in the Football League during a portion of the accounting period. Their top figure instead amounts to £61m, which breaks down as £13m for the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons when they were in the Championship, plus £35m for last season, their first back in the top flight.
Have there been any other cases like this?
Forest are just the third club to face action like this, following Everton’s two separate breaches and subsequent points deduction this season, while Manchester City were hit with more than 100 charges last February.
The outcome of City’s case has not yet been communicated, with The Athletic reporting that a verdict — which would be subject to appeal — likely to take considerable time to be reached.
Last year, Chelsea’s new owners self-reported incomplete financial information related to transactions that took place during the stewardship of the previous owner, Roman Abramovich, between 2012 and 2019.
Transactions made under Abramovich are still under investigation (Paul Gilham/Getty Images)
European governing body UEFA fined them €10m for the historical breach in July while the Premier League and English FA are continuing to investigate.
There have been several precedents in the English Football League in recent years, but a punishment relating to breaches of PSR in the top tier of English football was unprecedented before Everton.
In fact, on only two other occasions has a club been handed a points penalty in Premier League history.
Middlesbrough were docked three points for failing to fulfil a fixture in the 1996-97 season while Portsmouth were hit with a nine-point penalty in January of the 2009-10 campaign after going into administration.
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‘Frustration and disappointment for Forest’
Analysis by Nottingham Forest correspondent Paul Taylor
There is frustration and disappointment at Nottingham Forest, as they find themselves plunged into the Premier League relegation zone by a four point deduction for breaching profit and sustainability regulations.
And, over the weekend, the suggestion from within the club was that four points was the level of punishment at which they would consider making an appeal. They have 14 days to lodge that appeal, so they do have time to digest the verdict, before rushing into a decision. But it is likely that they will.
The fact that it drops them into the bottom three, will rub a little additional salt into the wound.
Nottingham Forest’s run in
| Team | Date | Home/away |
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March 30 |
Home |
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April 2 |
Home |
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April 8 |
Away |
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April 13 |
Home |
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April 20 |
Away |
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April 27 |
Home |
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May 4 |
Away |
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May 11 |
Home |
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May 19 |
Away |
As will the fact that, throughout the process, Forest feel as though they have gone out of their way to work with the Premier League — to accept that they have breached regulations, but to explain what they believe were mitigating circumstances — largely surrounding the sale of Brennan Johnson, late in the window.
But, amid the frustration — at a time when Forest have felt hard done by over a number of controversial refereeing decisions — there will also be an understanding that the punishment might have been more severe.
And, even amid the possibility of an appeal, Forest at least now know what they are facing, as they look to secure a third season of top flight football, under Nuno Espirito Santo.
(Top photo: Jon Hobley/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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