RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Chaos and confusion reign in the season of the asterisk… how can it be that Forest and Everton face real-time action when City have won 12 trophies since their investigation began?

This is what football will look like in the 2023-2024 season – the year of the pencil. From the lightly drawn asterisk. Of the draconian sanctions that can end a campaign but can also be brushed aside in a hearing and no hard feelings.

We don’t know how the situations with Everton and Nottingham Forest will play out. We don’t know if the charges issued by the Premier League on Monday will translate into deductions, just as we don’t know if Everton’s original 10-point penalty will decrease, disappear or survive in its entirety through the appeals process .

What we do know is that chaos and confusion have found a comfortable place at the table, replacing the certainty we used to get from cold, reliable numbers. Remember when numbers were absolute? When the songs you had when the music stopped were the songs you were stuck with?

The intention is for the music to stop at the end of the Premier League season on May 19, but that has not yet been finalized. Not now.

If we focus on the more layered scenario at Everton, the question of their survival or demise may extend beyond the last match. Everton could celebrate staying at Arsenal only to lose his place at a judicial hearing a few days later because asterisk two cannot be heard, appealed and resolved until asterisk one is dealt with.

Home fans coordinated a protest during the Toffees’ first match after their 10-point deduction in November

That’s a huge mess to understand, but it suits football in the VAR era: no key moment can be trusted until all checks have been completed. You can’t rely on an instinct for joy because someone somewhere, whether in Stockley Park or in the chambers of an independent panel, has to have the final say.

Believing what you see at a certain moment, such as May 19, is no longer enough. Provisional objectives, provisional sanctions and provisional celebrations are all subject to review.

The Premier League’s position on this issue requires significant research. Granted, there are rules you have to adhere to. And speed in these particular cases is certainly preferable to the protracted box office drama of Manchester City, which has been given the freedom to conquer the football world while 115 alleged infringements are passed through the digestive tract of expensive, tricky lawyers.

So the authorities should not necessarily be blamed for having desires or intentions. Besides this, the problem that lends itself to a touch of farce is that these rules on profits and sustainability are expected to be changed in August, as is known.

That means what is guilty in the winter could be considered innocent in the summer, after which Everton and Forest could be in the Championship. They can be demoted based on rules that are sufficiently flawed to require change. That is as dubious and difficult to accept as the delays surrounding the City case, which in itself has raised the issue of big fish bias.

How can it be acceptable that Forest and Everton face real-time action and meaningful sanctions when glaciers could cross a landmass in the years between the start of the Premier League’s City investigation in December 2018 and the continued wait for a solution?

Nottingham Forest have also been charged by the Premier League for breaching financial rules

Since that investigation began, they have won 12 trophies – at least one in every competition they have competed in – and that says nothing about what they have collected during the period in which the breaches are alleged to have occurred.

If they are found guilty of what is the most serious test of British football’s credibility, it is inconceivable that they will receive a punishment that actually addresses the offending.

Forest and Everton appear to be on a different judicial level, even if the verdict is written only in pencil.