by A further two points were deducted for Everton for breaching spending rules. For some it is a justified punishment but for others Everton have become a scapegoat.
Everton deserves sympathy for three reasons
Those who are being punished did not cause the mess
Sean Dyche must be thinking of mentioning Al Pacino in The Godfather Part III when considering this season’s relegation battle.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”
The combined forces of the Premier League (on a mission to plead the merits of continued independence amid the threat of a government shutdown), an outgoing owner and the tainted legacy of Everton’s former directors have left the club teetering on together.
The paradox at the heart of the Goodison situation is that, with the exception of Farhad Moshiri who is already desperately trying to leave, the people responsible are already there, and in the case of former sponsor Alisher Usmanov who are due to world events beyond. Everton control.
Those seeking to sweep away the debris – and long-suffering supporters – are collateral damage and have good reason to believe that politics rather than a relentless sense of justice is the real motivation for recent strong action.
The concept of financial fairness and rules on profit and sustainability was to discourage clubs from flirting with economic disaster. Instead, the Premier League looks like a body that aims to kick clubs when they are down.
Premier League gambling
During their first PSR hearing, the regulatory commission could not understand why the Premier League wanted a 12-point deduction. In the subsequent appeal, a newly formed group of commissioners could not work out how the people in the judgment decided on 10.
In the case of Nottingham Forest, another new commission was concerned as to why Everton were hit with a six-point penalty, so they gave Nuno Espirito Santo’s team four, citing their cooperation as a factor. That drew ridicule from Everton, who were told in their hearing that they were forced to co-operate and that it could and should not be a mitigating factor.
Everton are still reeling from yet another controversial interpretation of their relationship with the Premier League over the past three years, convinced they were ‘working with them’ to get an unexpected consequence for their main sponsor, Usmanov, after his sponsorship was declared illegal, as good to decide. the external funding to keep the stadium project going.
Everton sold Richarlison on the last day of June 2022, to meet the PSR deadline. They could use Forest’s argument with Brennan Johnson and claimed they would have received a bigger fee from Tottenham Hotspur if they kept him until the deadline.
The crux of Everton’s argument remains whether a five-year £150 million revolving credit facility with Rights and Media Funding, and the interest payable thereon, serves the running of the club (which PSR opposes) or pays for the stadium (not).
In March 2022, the Everton board gave serious consideration to abandoning the stadium project. They decided, in the long term, that it was an apocalyptic idea because it removed the light that the club and its fans are looking for.
They say that Rights and Media agreed that their facility could be used for the stadium and provided written evidence to the commission. He did not take advantage of it because that arrangement was not clear enough from the beginning, according to the Premier League.
The timeliness and targeting of action in the Premier League
Everton’s accounts are certainly a mess. It is also the method of sanctioning English football.
Since Manchester City and Everton were first charged last season, and Nottingham Forest came in earlier this one, the process is full of contradictions and inconsistencies, the Premier League is still giving the impression that they are in the popularity of the easier targets because it is. ‘more complicated and time-consuming’ to apprehend the alleged serial offenders.
It is like dedicating an entire investigative unit to punishing those caught and admitted to illegally dipping their hands in the till once, but allowing those believed to have committed 115 heists to continue on their way relaxed
Whatever the failings of Everton’s management – and there have been many since 2016 – it is an indication of how despicable the Premier League has become for the club to be punished twice in one season for offenses over four years.
They have failed to eradicate the sense of persecution at Goodison Park, where there is an unshakable sense that they are being unfairly and disproportionately punished for historical misdemeanors that they have sought to atone for without their ability to stay in the Premier League themselves- no more sabotaging.
…and for three reasons they deserve punishment
They admitted their guilt
As Sean Dyche admitted with admirable honesty, and too many Everton executives have failed to admit, the club’s problems start with reckless spending. Everton are the architects of their situation.
The fact that the club has not achieved any sporting benefit from spending more than £500 million is due to the incompetence of those who burned through that money.
While it is true that Everton have paid a price for the war in Ukraine, and have taken on a heavy financial burden by committing to a new stadium which has required more loans to be taken out, their cost cutting further in the last four years. They decided to sign players and give new contracts to assets such as Jordan Pickford rather than sell more players or reduce wages significantly to cut costs. The counter-argument is that a guaranteed fire sale would be under siege.
What happened at Goodison, certainly immediately after Moshiri’s takeover in 2016, should serve as a warning to those who naively claim that PSR rules exist to prevent clubs from using fresh access to billions to to challenge the established top four. Everton’s losses would have been even greater and their situation more precarious had Moshiri and his acolytes spent more.
Although the focus of the Premier League’s investigations is on the accounts of the last four years, it is tempting not to recognize that the poor running of the club in previous years was the cause of Goodison’s crisis.
It would be even worse last season
There is a legitimate argument that Everton are lucky the governing body didn’t show its teeth earlier. Everton and Nottingham Forest have been charged this season with breaches of the 2022-23 accounts. Accordingly Everton’s earlier deduction should have just made the 2021-22 accounts, which saw them in the relegation fight last year. They would have gone down so it was a lucky escape.
True, that doesn’t stop the cynicism of seeing the Premier League board act with urgency over the past 12 months, now that demand for an independent regulator is growing.
But it has worked out better for Everton to get points deductions in a season where the bottom three have been cut in such turmoil, and the number of wins needed to stay in the Premier League could be the lowest in record. If you’re going to drop points, do so in a year with Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town in the top flight.
If the Premier League had shown more intent when Everton’s worst excesses were on display and those responsible were still in post, the resistance from Goodison Park would have been as strong, but their arguments about the goalposts being moved as the process unfolded. weight.
Where is the sympathy for Leeds United and Southampton?
Perhaps one of the worst side effects of the Everton situation is that Leeds United and Southampton have more or less intervened (publicly at least) to claim that they have suffered the most, that certainly more than Everton, since they registered and followed the PSR rules and were relegated instead of the Merseyside club.
It’s those clubs who have recently dropped out of the Championship and are looking to bounce back from the biggest losers so far – apart from Leicester City, who will have to answer for their own reasons.
For years, Leeds have been presented as a rogue example of why PSR is needed, a boom and bust policy from the Peter Ridsdale era showing why clubs needed defensive leagues.
Everton’s most vocal defenders have to ask themselves from time to time how they would feel in another situation where Moshiri’s regime stuck strictly to the approved financial guidelines and went down, while a rival club remained in the Premier League after spending over £500 million and incurred the kind of loss in Everton’s accounts. Given the passion of Everton fans, one could well imagine the weekly demonstrations demanding a sanction for those who admit guilt, while cursing their own club for not doing more to keep them in the first flight .
