Nottingham Forest fans have to hear more about off-the-field rulings than they’d like to, with Simon Jordan backing up their feelings on one particularly harsh regulation.
The talkSPORT presenter has a mixed track record when it comes to Forest, with some aspects of the club clearly to his liking and some, such as the workings of Evangelos Marinakis, more difficult to digest.
Jordan hailed the City Ground atmosphere in May while criticising the noise at Leeds’ playoff semi-final victory, whilst Marinakis has been criticised by Jordan in the past for some of his unprofessional conduct in public.
Bizarrely, though, Jordan thinks Marinakis has done remarkable things at Forest so he can at least respect how the Reds have acclimatised to the Premier League, which can’t be ignored by Nuno Espirito Santo’s job to get Forest into Champions League consideration.
Most famously, Forest were deducted four points for a PSR breach in response to the very things Simon had praised Marinakis for. This led to Jordan concluding that the Premier League financial rules were unfair, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to hear that he has reiterated this point on air recently.
Simon Jordan slams ‘perplexing’ financial rules against Nottingham Forest
On the same talkSPORT show that Jim White reminisced about a memorable Marinakis conversation, Jordan was quick to turn the conversation back to financial rulings in the Premier League, something he still believes Forest have been wronged by.
Jordan said: “They’re an interesting phenomenon because they’ve had some adversity. Obviously, they had the unfairness, I think, of the regulations allowing them to carry losses from the Championship, which are far lesser than those in the Premier League and feeling disadvantaged by that.
“It’s almost perplexing, so there’s a penalty for going up into the Premier League because ultimately, you’re allowed to lose less in your last cycle so you carry that into the Premier League which is absurd and disadvantages the teams coming up that want to have a go.”
Forest managed to pass the latest PSR check due to the work done to improve the financial situation after the points deduction, but Jordan clearly thinks this punishment was unfair in the first place.
However unfair Jordan may feel the regulations are, he went on to explain that one of the deals that Forest completed in the early Premier League days didn’t help their case.
Simon Jordan was unimpressed by Nottingham Forest signing Jesse Lingard
Signings such as Morgan Gibbs-White and Taiwo Awoniyi greatly aided Forest’s bid to stay in the Premier League, but with the volume of players brought in, there were always going to be some duds.
One of which was former England international Jesse Lingard, who Jordan thought was the wrong deal to make for Marinakis.
Jordan said: “Some of the signings they made initially, I think the Lingard signing was a terrible signing and was always going to be a terrible signing, it was the wrong way to go.
The midfielder only lasted a season at Forest, as Steve Cooper decided to let Lingard leave in the summer 2023 window.
Lingard believed he didn’t play much at Forest due to his high bonuses, which may be true given what we know about the financial situation at the club around the time of Lingard’s stay. Even if that’s true, though, it certainly backs Jordan’s point that the signing wasn’t a hit at the City Ground.
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