A finance expert believes it is unlikely Nottingham Forest's club-record sale of Brennan Johnson to Tottenham will be accepted as a mitigating factor in their charge of breaching the Premier League 's financial rules.

But Stefan Borson, who has previously worked as Manchester City's financial advisor, believes the fact the charge relates to the Reds breaching only one year of the Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules will be in the club's favour when an independent commission decides their fate.

Forest were charged in January for breaching the Premier League's financial rules and referred to an independent commission.

They are expected to face the independent commission next week and could face sanctions, including a points deduction.

A key part of Forest's defence will revolve around the sale of Johnson to Tottenham for PS47.

5m on transfer deadline day last summer.

The sale of the Nigel Doughty Academy graduate fell outside of the accounting timeframe assessed by the Premier League.

However, the Reds argue that by waiting until late in the window, they got a bigger transfer fee for Johnson, having rejected smaller offers made by Brentford earlier in the summer.

The case relates to an assessment of the club's finances over a three-year period, ending in season 2022/23, so Forest were in the Championship for two of those seasons before winning promotion to the Premier League for the 2022/23 campaign.

Financial regulations state Premier League clubs are only allowed to make a maximum loss of PS105 million across a rolling three-year period, or PS35m each season.

For promoted teams that is reduced, meaning the Reds have been restricted to losses of PS61m for the last three campaigns - PS13m for the two seasons in the Championship prior to promotion, plus PS35m last season.

The extent to which the club have breached the limit is not yet known, although they signed a lot of players upon winning promotion to the Premier League.

Speaking on talkSPORT, Borson said: "I'd be slightly concerned if I was a Forest fan because of the aggravating factors because it looks like they spent recklessly and that's something that will put them further up the scale of punishment.

"Putting them further down the scale, however, is that they only breached one year of Premier League financial fair play and so when a team has been promoted you have an allowance from the EFL for two of the years and a Premier League allowance for one of the years so in essence PS61million was the target and in the two years in the EFL they were there or thereabouts, so they may well get away with the first two years of the period - partly because they didn't breach by very much and partly because the Premier League isn't going to know how to deal with it because it's not in their remit.

"I would think that Forest are probably looking at something like two to three points, plus the potential of some aggravating factor around the recklessness of the spending, minus the potential of what the appeal commission describe as the golden mitigation which Sheffield Wednesday had when they sold their stadium which Nottingham Forest are hinting will be Brennan Johnson.

"I think it's very unlikely that the paperwork surrounding Johnson matches the tone of their appeal, so I suspect they will not get mitigation for Johnson and therefore it will be how big an aggravating factor is the recklessness and how do they deal with this two-year stub period when they were in the EFL.

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