Culture secretary urged by Lib Dems to act over ‘disgraceful treatment’ of Crystal Palace

A group of Liberal Democrat MPs from south London has written to the culture secretary urging her to intervene over Crystal Palace’s demotion from the Europa League, as the club’s most influential supporters’ group plans to take its protest to Uefa’s headquarters in Switzerland.

European football’s governing body said last week the FA Cup winners had breached its multi-club ownership rules and would play in the Conference League. Palace are expected to appeal to the court of arbitration for sport, and hundreds of supporters marched to Selhurst Park on Tuesday night to voice anger at Uefa’s decision.

A letter was sent to Lisa Nandy on Wednesday by seven Lib Dem MPs including Bobby Dean, whose Carshalton and Wallington constituency contains many Palace supporters, and the leader, Sir Ed Davey, expressing deep concern over Palace’s “disgraceful treatment”. It requested that the secretary of state for culture, media and sport ensure “the decision-making process is reviewed for transparency and fairness” and “the club is given a fair opportunity to appeal or respond to any allegations”.

The letter says: “As you may be aware, other clubs seem to go through much more protracted disputes with less severe outcomes. Many believe that this process has been opaque and disproportionately punitive. We hope you will take this matter seriously and act to uphold the principles of fairness, accountability, and integrity in sport.”

Dean told the Guardian: “This is heartbreaking for fans. In what should be an unblemished year of celebration for the club, officials totally disconnected from the side’s success on the pitch have issued a highly unusual and severe punishment that raises serious questions about fairness in the governance of English football. We are urging the government to back our appeal to Uefa for a thorough review of this decision. Fans must be at the centre of the game, not treated as an afterthought.”

Clubs with the same owner are barred from competing in the same Uefa competition if an individual or ownership group is considered to have a decisive influence over more than one of those teams. Uefa deemed that a move by Palace’s biggest shareholder, John Textor, whose company Eagle Football Holdings also owns Lyon, who have also qualified for the Europa League, to sell his stake to the New York Jets owner, Woody Johnson, had come too late despite completion of the deal being imminent.

Tuesday’s march was led by the Holmesdale Fanatics, who took aim at Uefa with a banner that described it as “morally bankrupt”. They have promised to organise another protest at Uefa’s headquarters in Nyon in the coming days.

“We want to go there and put enough pressure on them and make it enough of the public issue that we can affect the decision,” said Mickey Grafton. “In short, the next step is to go to Switzerland. We need to get a delegation out there. We won’t say what we’ve got planned now.”

Any appeal to Cas is likely to be fast-tracked given that the draw for the Conference League playoff round is on 4 August, and Palace are due to play the first leg three weeks later.