Keith Wyness reveals Evangelos Marinakis' chances of winning legal battle with Crystal Palace

Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis will find it very hard to win his defamation case against Crystal Palace. 

That is according to former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness, speaking exclusively to Football Insider, who believes that the Greek businessman will struggle to prove his reputation has been harmed by the Eagles’ fans.

The Forest chief has launched a lawsuit against the South London club, after their fans unfurled a banner last season showing him holding a gun to the head of midfielder Morgan Gibbs-White, accompanied by the line: “Mr Marinakis is not involved in blackmail, match fixing, drug trafficking or corruption!”

Wyness views the banner as “sarcastic” and noted that statements of that nature are often “protected” under UK law. 

He also pointed out that all of those accusations were already present in the “public area,” although he was quick to stress that none of them have yet been proven to be true. 

Nevertheless, Wyness believes that is the big obstacle facing Marinakis when it comes to his lawsuit, as the Palace fans didn’t make any accusations that weren’t already in public. 

Keith Wyness explains ‘very high bar’ amid Evangelos Marinakis lawsuit

Everton’s former chief Wyness – who served as CEO at Goodison Park between 2004 and 2009 and now runs a football consultancy advising elite clubs – is adamant that he does not expect Marinakis to win his case against Palace. 

The Scottish businessman outlined that there is a “very high bar” for defamation in UK law, and does not believe that the Forest owner will be able to prove damage to his reputation. 

Speaking on the latest edition of Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, he indicated that the lawsuit will be completely separate to football, and won’t bring any footballing punishments for the Eagles. 

“It's not a football authority's situation to go for. He's actually going to court and trying to prove defamation. But let's just go back to this banner,” Wyness said. 

“They use sarcasm to say that he was not guilty of blackmail, match fixing, corruption and drug trafficking. Now, the reason that's on there is that he's been charged with all those things, or people have tried to sue him in Greece about those things.

“I must point out very clearly, none of it was ever proven, and he denies everything and said it's just politically motivated. But in terms of defamation and UK law, as I say, it's a very high bar.

“Things like sarcasm are particularly protected and humour is protected, and his big thing here is he's got to show harm. I don't know how he's going to go about showing this has harmed him and his business.

“It's very hard for me to see how he can ever win this, particularly when those allegations were floating around already in the public arena.”

Morgan Gibbs-White latest after agent change

Football Insider revealed last weekend that Forest still have no plans to sell Gibbs-White this summer, despite his recent change of agent raising eyebrows. 

The East Midlands outfit are also under no pressure to sell the England hopeful, having netted a huge £116million for Elliot Anderson earlier in the window. 

Sources say that the change of agent is also not a sign that the attacking midfielder is trying to engineer an exit from the City Ground. 

Gibbs-White remains a central figure in Forest’s project, and Oliver Glasner is set to rely heavily on him this term.