I wasn't suggesting there was a legal basis to challenge them but we could have simply asked Herbert how the rules would have prevented Portsmouth's administration, or the very real possibility that we could have gone under in 2008.
Show our aggregated net loss over the appropriate three-year period (2006-2008) and that we were well within the PSR maximum allowable loss. The unadjusted aggregate net losses were £24.4m and accumulated depreciation was £8.4m. So even before deducting other allowable expenses (e.g. expenditure on youth development), we're only showing a loss of £16m over those three years.
If I remember rightly, it was mid-June 2008 when Ernst & Young were in & we were talking to David Bernstein about a plan to buy the club following the seemingly inevitable administration. Then ask him how these particular rules, whereby we would have easily passed PSR while simultaneously going into administration, could be seen as effective under those circumstances.
I suspect that he's have had to answer "They wouldn't", thereby completely undermining the whole credibility of his testimony.
I'm very nervous, as a non-expert, about preaching to an expert in courtroom procedure, but but if someone came out with a statement that, if proven to be false or substantially misleading would undermine the reliability of their testimony, and potentially their whole case, surely you'd take that opportunity to discredit them?
Herbert also talked about the PL having considered introducing APTs for a while, but there was no evidence of that until after the Newcastle takeover. Again, challenging his evidence on the reason for PSR, helps undermine his evidence in that. And didn't he also give the evidence about 'Gulf States' not really meaning 'Gulf States'?
Yet the tribunal found him a compelling witness. I doubt they'd have taken that view if we'd have shown early on he was talking shit.