Forest ask for clarity over Palace's Europa League place

Crystal Palace won the FA Cup by beating Manchester City at Wembley last month

Nottingham Forest have asked Uefa for clarity after expressing their concerns over Crystal Palace's Europa League place.

The Eagles won the FA Cup to qualify for Europe for the first time in their history, but Uefa must decide if they have breached its multi-club ownership rules.

Uefa's final ruling will centre on American businessman John Textor, owner of Eagle Football - which holds a 43% stake in Palace.

Eagle Football also owns a 77% stake in French side Lyon, who - like Palace - have qualified for next season's Europa League.

Uefa's rules state "no individual or legal entity" can hold a majority of shareholder voting rights at two clubs in the same European tournament.

If a ruling is made against Palace and Lyon, given the French side finished sixth in Ligue 1 they get priority over Palace, who ended 12th in the Premier League.

Forest finished seventh in the Premier League, earning a Europa Conference League play-off spot, but stand to gain if Palace are unable to compete in Europe and could be lifted to the Europa League.

Sources have told BBC Sport they have issued their reservations to Uefa.

Uefa's regulations are in place to prevent collusion between clubs. Palace's argument is their historic FA Cup win - beating Manchester City 1-0 last month - and European qualification was an achievement accomplished entirely on their own merit.

The club have insisted they are an entity which operates entirely independently, not within the structures of a multi-club model.

Palace also say there has been no employee, backroom staff or coach sharing with Lyon, no dialogue, no collaborative strategy, no combined partnerships, sponsorships or commercial deals and no collective scouting, analysis or software collaborations.

Forest have avoided this issue after owner Evangelos Marinakis diluted his control of the club.

The Greek businessman also controls Olympiakos, as well as Portuguese side Rio Ave and, at the time, Forest and Olympiakos were both on course to qualify for next season's Champions League.

Forest complied with the rules after Uefa changed the date to 1 March for clubs to highlight potential issues in ownership structures as it was becoming unmanageable to go through the checks required from the previous deadline of 1 June.

At that point Palace had not acted despite qualification through the FA Cup being a possibility.

The first and second qualification rounds of the Europa League and Conference League are in July.

BBC Sport contacted Uefa and Palace who declined to comment.

Analysis - why is this a problem now?

There have been many instances of Premier League clubs - Brighton, Manchester City and Manchester United over the past two summers - being affected by this multi-club issue but not being booted out of Uefa competition, so why is it a particular problem for Palace?

The major issue is they haven't dealt with it before a deadline. Significantly, that was brought forward to 1 March this year from the end of the season because Uefa simply did not have the time and space to deal with all the potential cases before the respective early qualifying draws next week (clubs all over Europe are affected - not just in England).

So, instead of knowing what the situation was, clubs had to second guess early in the season. It was fairly obvious Nottingham Forest had a good chance of making European football by that point, so they took preventative action.

We will never know what they would have done if they had been in Palace's position towards the end of February - about to play Millwall in the fifth round of a competition they had never previously won, knowing both Manchester clubs, Newcastle, Forest and Aston Villa were still in it.

So now Palace are pointing out John Textor has a significant stake in the club but has no input into how it operates.

The problem for them is the rule is there. Uefa has to make a judgement on a particularly tricky issue knowing if the outcome doesn't suit any party, they can go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) with an appeal.

Cas has already upheld a Fifa decision to kick Mexican club Leon out of the Club World Cup for transgressing stated multi-club ownership regulations.