by Goodison Park is always noisy, sometimes that noise is roars and sometimes it’s boos. When Everton kick off against Manchester United on Sunday, it’s safe to say the mood will be full of support. The annual putting aside of differences to come together behind the flag and fight relegation will come early this season: there is nothing like the sense of a common enemy to draw people together.
The enemy here is legion. It is the shambolic leadership of their own club, it is the Premier League for bringing charges and forcing a 10 point deduction and it is the independent panel to find them guilty and impose the sanction.
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It may also be the potential new owners: Everton could be in a frying pan but nobody can look at 777 Partners, their track record and Fifa sanction against them for unpaid transfer fees and they are not afraid that they might show fire. Even Genoa, which was hailed as a 777 success story after promotion last season, is on the brink of bankruptcy. Everton are up against the world and in the short term, to rouse the spirit and strengthen the nerves, that may not be a bad thing.
There’s a sense that if you’re going to close 10 points, this might not be the worst season it could happen. Sheffield United and Luton are clearly clubs with limited resources, although Burnley were unexpectedly poor. When it became clear that Vincent Kompany’s side were not going to produce at the highest level the form that had enabled them to dominate the Championship, the three promoted sides probably felt like three bottoms. For those behind the table looking anxiously over their shoulders, Bournemouth’s slow start under Andoni Iraola has provided an extra cushion.
Before the deduction, Everton were sitting comfortably nine points clear of the drop: they were pushed back into the pack rather than given a gap to even cross to get back into the relegation battle. The only shocker is that all four of those strugglers have had their opening fixture lists: just two games between them before this weekend, although Everton have all but one game left before the halfway point season route against the teams in the game. top half.
In the circumstances, United are almost the perfect match for old-school glamor and representatives of the establishment. For all that, they are really a cautionary tale in unregulated capitalism and the ingenuity of non-local non-expert ownership. United may have won four of their last five league games but they are not playing well and, as such, it is not only a potentially significant scalp but a plausible one. The memory of Phil Neville beating Cristiano Ronaldo to fire Everton into life in 2008-09 will be remembered on Sunday evening.
But there is also the fact that United have been one of the leaders of the English Super League push. It’s the death of justice – no governing body should fail to punish an offense because other offenses go largely unpunished – but equally Everton fans are entitled to ask why a little protects the 10 points too much money conspiring only against the league itself. shared fine £22m.
And that’s where the wider implications become so interesting. Leaving aside the Super League issue, if this is the penalty for being convicted of a single breach of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations, when the mitigating factors of the pandemic, sanctions against a major sponsor and a player whose contract was with be. off for non-football reasons, when the club seems to have been quite co-operative, what could the sanction be for, say, 115 infringements, some for lack of co-operation, in a pre-Covid world? In Everton’s case, the Premier League called for a sanction of six points plus one for every £5m exceeded: that logic could see hundreds of points deducted from other clubs.
Then there is the question of compensation for those who were relegated while Everton stayed up. In 2009, West Ham reached an out-of-court settlement with Sheffield United of £15m (plus £5m if the club was sold in the next five years, as they were), after being fined for third-party ownership rules to overcome. regarding Carlos Tevez, who scored the winner at Manchester United on the final day of the 2006-07 season to keep the Hammers up.
If the tariff was £20m then, it can be assumed that the equivalent would be much higher now (although it may be more difficult to prove direct causation than in the case of Tévez), especially given that five clubs were given the right to chase. demands. And again, however big that fee would be, it would be dwarfed by the potential figures if a side that had regularly qualified for Europe over a longer period were found guilty.
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From a wider perspective, that was perhaps the most striking aspect of Everton’s penalty. It is now nine months since the 115 charges against Manchester City were announced, for alleged offenses dating back to 2009. Even before the revelations from the secret Cypriot files, the Premier League had been investigating Chelsea’s finances as far back as 2012 .
As Everton’s case ends with serious consequences, the lack of resolution in the case against City becomes more glaring – and the tariff is now set if they are found guilty. There are two basic issues here: the Premier League can prosecute clubs of Everton’s stature, but can they prosecute state and oligarch clubs? And if they can, with City accused and Chelsea under investigation, 12 of the last 19 league matches are in doubt.
Whatever their eventual results, unless there is an overtly rigorous and thorough process, the question remains whether the modern Premier League can even be governed. Everton’s anger may be legitimately directed at those who ran so badly, it may be directed at the apparent arbitrariness of the process, it may be partly self-pity, but it is also a cry against the fear that modern football has fallen. into the hands of forces beyond control.
