Everton have been deducted a further two points for breaching spending rules. For some it is a justified punishment, but for others Everton has been made a scapegoat.
Three reasons why Everton deserve sympathy
Those being punished did not cause the mess
Sean Dyche may feel like quoting Al Pacino from Godfather Part III as he considers this season’s relegation battle.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.”
The combined forces of the Premier League (on a mission to advocate the benefits of continued independence amid the threat of government interference), an outgoing owner and the tainted legacy of former Everton directors have brought the club to the brink of collapse .
The paradox at the heart of the Goodison case is that, with the exception of Farhad Moshiri, who is already desperately trying to leave, those responsible have already left the scene, and in the case of former sponsor Alisher Usmanov it is due to global events outside. Everton’s control.
Those trying to clear the rubble – and long-suffering supporters – are collateral damage, and there are good reasons to believe that politics, not a steadfast sense of justice, is the true motivation for recent strong action.
The concept of financial fair play, profit and sustainability rules was intended to prevent clubs from flirting with economic disaster. Instead, the Premier League seems like an organization that wants to kick clubs when they are in trouble.
The silliness of the Premier League
At their first PSR hearing, a regulatory committee could not understand why the Premier League wanted a 12-point deduction. In the subsequent appeal, a newly formed group of commissioners could not figure out how the jurors came to 10.
In the Nottingham Forest case, another new committee was baffled as to why Everton were given a six-point penalty, so they gave Nuno Espirito Santo’s team four, citing their cooperation as a factor. That infuriated Everton, who were told at their hearing that they had been coerced into cooperating and that this could not and should not be a mitigating circumstance.
Everton remain concerned about other controversial interpretations of their relationship with the Premier League over the past three years, adamant that they were ‘working with them’ to deal with the unforeseen consequences of their main sponsor, Usmanov, declaring his sponsorship illegal, and that the external financing to keep the stadium project going.
Everton sold Richarlison on the last day of June 2022 to meet the PSR deadline. They could have used the Forest argument with Brennan Johnson and claimed they would have received a higher fee from Tottenham Hotspur if they had kept him until the deadline.
The crux of Everton’s argument remains whether a £150 million revolving five-year credit facility with Rights and Media Funding, and the interest payable on it, is for the purpose of running the club (which is contrary to PSR) or for paying for the stadium (which is not the case).
In March 2022, Everton’s board seriously considered abandoning the stadium project. They decided that this was an apocalyptic idea in the long run because it took away the beacon of light that the club and its fans look to.
They say Rights and Media agreed their facility could be used for the stadium and provided written evidence to the committee. To no avail, because according to the Premier League, that arrangement was not clear enough from the start.
The timing and targeting of the Premier League action
Everton’s accounts are certainly a mess. This also applies to the sanctioning method of English football.
Since Manchester City and Everton were first charged last season, and joined by Nottingham Forest earlier this season, the process has been riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies, with the Premier League still giving the impression that they are chasing the easier targets, because it is ‘more complicated and time-consuming’ to quickly track down alleged serial offenders.
It’s akin to deploying an entire investigative unit to punish those who have been arrested and admitted to once illegally putting their hands in the cash register, only to send those believed to have committed 115 robberies on their merry way to be prosecuted.
Regardless of the failures of Everton’s management – and there have been many since 2016 – the club being punished twice in one season for transgressions over four years is an illustration of how inept the Premier League has been.
They have failed to eradicate the sense of persecution at Goodison Park, where there is an unshakable sense that they are being thoughtlessly and disproportionately punished for historic crimes they have tried to solve without even affecting their ability to stay in the Premier League to undermine it even further.
…and three reasons why they deserve punishment
They have followed the rules – and admitted violations
As Sean Dyche acknowledged with admirable honesty, and too many Everton managers have been unwilling to admit, the club’s problems start with reckless spending. Everton are architects of their situation.
The fact that the club did not gain any sporting advantage by spending more than £500 million is due to the incompetence of those who burned that money.
While it is true that Everton paid a price for the war in Ukraine and took on a heavy financial burden by committing to a new stadium that demanded more loans, the cost savings over the past four years had can go further. They decided to sign players and give new contracts to assets such as Jordan Pickford rather than sell more players or significantly reduce wages to reduce costs. The counter argument is that a fire sale would have guaranteed relegation.
What happened at Goodison, especially in the immediate aftermath of Moshiri’s takeover in 2016, should serve as a warning to those who naively claim that PSR rules exist to prevent clubs from using new access to billions to challenge the established top four to challenge. Everton’s losses would have been even greater and their situation more precarious if Moshiri and his followers had spent even more.
Although the focus of the Premier League investigation has been on the accounts of the past four years, it is unfair not to acknowledge that the club’s poor performance in the years leading up to the crisis caused the Goodison crisis.
Last season it could have been even worse
There is a legitimate argument that Everton are lucky the governing body didn’t show its teeth sooner. Everton and Nottingham Forest were charged this season over accounting breaches for the 2022/2023 season. It follows that Everton’s previous deduction should have taken place in the immediate aftermath of the 2021/2022 accounts, impacting them in last year’s relegation battle. They would have crashed, so it was a lucky escape.
True, this hasn’t stopped cynics from seeing that the Premier League’s board has acted with more urgency over the past 12 months, as demand for an independent regulator grows.
But it has worked out better for Everton to get points deducted in a season where the bottom three have been so adrift, and the number of wins needed to stay in the Premier League could be among the lowest ever. If you’re going to lose points, do it in a year when Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town are at the top.
Had the Premier League shown more intent when Everton’s worst excesses were visible and those responsible were still in post, Goodison Park’s resistance would have been just as strong, but their arguments about moving the goalposts as the process unfolds developed further would not have yielded anything. weight.
Where is the sympathy for Leeds United and Southampton?
Perhaps one of the most baffling side effects of the Everton case is how little Leeds United and Southampton have stepped in (at least publicly) to claim that they are the ones who have suffered the most, certainly more than Everton, since they joined joined and followed PSR rules and were relegated instead of the Merseyside club.
The recently relegated Championship clubs trying to get back up are the biggest losers yet – with the exception of Leicester City, who have to answer to their own charges.
For years, Leeds were presented as the villain example explaining why PSR is necessary, while the boom-and-bust policies of the Peter Ridsdale era showed why clubs needed layers of protection.
Everton’s most outspoken defenders must occasionally ask themselves how they would feel in an alternative scenario where the Moshiri regime had strictly adhered to the permissible financial guidelines and gone under, while a rival Premier League club had remained after spending more than £500 million and suffering the kind of losses that are in Everton’s accounts. Given the passion of Everton’s fanbase, you can easily imagine the weekly demonstrations demanding a sanction for those who plead guilty, while cursing their own club for not doing more to keep them at the top.