QPR open legal proceedings against Football League over legality of FFP rules as they could face up to a £58m fine following relegation

Queen’s Park Rangers’ players seemed to meekly accept their relegation from the Premier League on Sunday but the club have insisted they would fight the Football League’s attempts to fine them £50m for Financial Fair Play breaches in the 2013-14 season.

Losing 6-0 at Manchester City confirmed QPR’s relegation into the Championship and therefore made them accountable again to the Football League for their financial results from last season, which they filed in December.

The Football League believe that the club are in breach of their Financial Fair Play regulations over £60m of loans written off by the club’s owners. That includes a loan of £53.7m from Tune QPR, the company through which chairman Tony Fernandes and others own a majority stake in the club. If that injection of money is not accepted, QPR will be judged to have lost £69.7m in 2013-14. That is a sum far in excess of Football League’s rules and would leave them liable to a fine in the region of £50m.

QPR, though, are legally challenging the Football League’s FFP laws, with the hope of overturning them and thereby being able to play in the Championship next season without having to pay the fine. The club’s legal case will go to independent arbitration and only if and when QPR lose will they be liable to pay the fine.

“Legal proceedings are ongoing between QPR Football Club and the Football League,” the club said in a statement. “QPR challenges the legality of the Football League’s Championship Financial Fair Play Rules and any charge against QPR (if any) for breach of FFP Rules shall not be commenced pending the outcome of that challenge. The proceedings are confidential in nature and neither party is entitled to comment upon the proceedings until the independent arbitral panel has delivered its decision.”

QPR’s legal challenge is a landmark case which if successful would fatally undermine the Football League’s attempts to impose their own FFP framework. The club’s arguments are likely to focus on how the Football League’s own FPP rules have changed, with the possibility of a competition law challenge on the basis that the League was abusing its dominant position in an anti-competitive manner.

If the challenge fails, and the FFP laws stand, QPR’s owners will have to pay the fine. The Football League’s FFP system does not have the same plea-bargain mechanism that Uefa does, which means that the strict guidelines for FFP fines are more prescriptive.

The consequence will be that QPR would find it harder to negotiate a smaller fine, although a compromise is possible, with the next Championship season starting on 8 August. The fine, if they paid, would likely go to charity, despite the Football League’s original wish that fines be redistributed to compliant clubs.

If QPR did not agree to pay then, hypothetically, they would be barred from playing in next season’s Football League. Shaun Harvey, the Football League chief executive, warned at the SoccerEx conference last year that that was a possibility, with QPR relegated to the Conference if they refused to pay. The club, though, were absolutely insistent last night that they will be playing in the Championship next season.

Chris Ramsey is likely to continue as QPR manager next season and there is support for him from among the players. Midfielder Leroy Fer said in the aftermath of the heavy defeat at the Etihad Stadium that the players would like Ramsey to continue to help them win promotion back to the top flight next year.

“We would like him to stay because in the last weeks he has made us play football better even if we didn’t get the results,” Fer said. “It was a hard job for him to help us stay up and he’s been unlucky too. But I think he has done a great job and he knows what this club is all about. I hope he stays, makes us a better team and gets us back up.”