*Shakes head* Everton again.

[Bob]

2 hours ago, Clem H Fandango said:

Citeh wouldnt care though?

 

The original financial cheating has put them where they are now and where they will stay for the forseeable future. by all means strip them of titles but they will regain them with a little help of better accountancy.

Best thing is for them to have points deducted and demoted a few leagues (wishful thinking).

Im very much seeing the removal of titles being in addition to the formal punishment, of which I personally think only demotion from the league has any impact (or sufficient points that it has the same effect).

[Vincent Vega]

Looks like Jonathan Northcross will be joining their list of sworn enemies after his piece today in the Sunday Times.

 

FOOTBALL | JONATHAN NORTHCROFT

 

‘Reckless’ Everton pay price of trying to live the dream

 

Club ignored multiple warnings and splurged money under Lampard in bid to gatecrash Premier League elite

 

We should start with the goal that kept Everton in the Premier League. The ball was with Idrissa Gueye, who played a diagonal into the box towards Amadou Onana whose jump pressured Bournemouth’s Matías Viña into a poor clearance. Abdoulaye Doucouré gathered and from 20 yards screamed home a shot. It secured Everton the 1-0 win, on the final day of last season, that kept them above relegated Leicester City.

 

Start with that goal, because reaction to an independent commission’s decision to dock Everton ten points for breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) has very quickly descended into the dry fiscal argument and ripe whataboutery that tends to derail conversations around financial fair play.

 

When, really, the nub of it is the actual football. Should Gueye, Onana and Doucouré have been on the pitch for Everton that day? Effectively, it is Everton’s decision to spend money they didn’t have (by PSR calculations) to put them there that has incurred an unprecedented punishment. Gueye, Onana, Doucouré, the goal — survive. Instead of VAR, we will go to the appeals courts to discover if it should have stood.

 

Everton’s penalty is for losses totalling £124.5 million from 2019 to 2022, which is £19.5 million above the £105 million limit for any three-season period set out by PSR. The commission’s 41-page judgment details the many ways in which Everton sought to justify the breach.

 

Some were remarkable, and the way the club tested the patience of the commission — which had to wade through 40,000 documents — is seen in the judgment’s rather peeved and non-legal language in places. Words like “recklessness” are used; the phrase “less than frank”.

 

Important to the case is interest payable on loans taken by Everton to build their new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock — which the Premier League allowed to be factored into the club’s accounts in 2021 but not 2022. Also involved are disputes over the extent to which Covid affected Everton’s losses, and whether certain exceptional circumstances should be factored in such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (which stopped Everton accessing a £200 million naming rights sponsorship, the bulk up front, from sanctioned oligarch Alisher Usmanov), and a star footballer (“Player X”) being dismissed for breach of contract.

 

But the bigger picture is the football. The reason Everton were sailing close to the wind in the first place lay in the extraordinary investment that Moshiri made in chasing success at the start of his ownership. He has spent £750 million since taking control in February 2016, with by far the biggest chunk going on transfers, wages, coaching changes, and associated fees.

 

By the end of his first five years, Everton’s net transfer spend was £230 million (the sixth-highest in the Premier League during the period) and they had one of the world’s best-paid managers, Carlo Ancelotti, on £14 million per year, having already spent £37 million hiring and paying off coaches under Moshiri. “What we’re ultimately guilty of is that we dared to dream and rolled the dice,” said a source at Goodison. “The football club took itself to the line.”

 

However, the source pointed out that in this period, Everton were also close to making Moshiri’s strategy work. The aim was, through a big initial outlay, to become a top-five club, access Uefa money, grow commercially and have a squad rich in value from which losses could be recouped through player sales. It’s forgotten that under Ancelotti, just after Christmas in 2020, Everton were second in the Premier League.

 

Doucouré was one of the expensive transfers of the Ancelotti era but if such signings — and decisions such as hiring James Rodríguez for £250,000 per week — seem foolhardy now, the rationale was that having employed one of the game’s greatest managers “you don’t buy a Ferrari then be unwilling to put petrol in it”.

 

It’s that age old football story of living the dream before the living nightmare comes. From early 2019, long before Ancelotti’s appointment in December that year, Everton were concerned about PSR and began petitioning the Premier League for leeway in how costs related to its new stadium could be capitalised. They decided to work with the league rather than obfuscate, and perhaps this led to the Premier League striking a deal with Everton in August 2021 that is now the cause of disquiet among other clubs.

 

Essentially, the league agreed to let Everton off from its “forecast non-compliance” on condition it adhered to certain disciplines. Other clubs are unhappy because on hearing rumours of this deal the Premier League’s executive “went quiet” when asked why no prosecution was taking place. The league’s conditions included Everton tightly controlling transfer spending.

 

Rafa Benítez was Everton’s recently appointed manager and having been sold the job as a “project” was told within days of arriving there would be virtually zero spending on players. Needing wingers to supply Dominic Calvert-Lewin, he had Luis Díaz and Dwight McNeil lined up but instead could only sign Andros Townsend and Demarai Gray for a combined £1.5 million. The only striker he could recruit was a free transfer, Salomón Rondón.

 

It is what happened next that appears to have stung the Premier League to prosecute. Just before Benítez was sacked in January 2022, Everton sold Lucas Digne for £25 million. Rather than bank the money and make inroads into the PSR shortfall, Everton spent it — and more — on recruiting Nathan Patterson and Vitaliy Mykolenko for a combined £30 million.

 

No sooner had Frank Lampard taken over, Everton signed Dele Alli — the deal involved no transfer fee but high wages and significant additional costs. Then, in the summer, with Lampard pressuring Moshiri to allow a revamp, Everton bought Onana for £34 million, McNeil for £20 million, Neal Maupay for £15 million, James Garner for £9 million and Gueye for £8 million while recruiting James Tarkowski and loanee Conor Coady without transfer fees, but with sizeable wages and associated costs.

 

In the commission’s judgment, under the heading, “Overspend despite repeated warnings” there is a damning passage. Everton had reached a position where they had to ask the Premier League for permission to make transfers. Each time the Premier League approved a signing it warned the club about PSR. The judgment says “that for Everton to have persisted in player purchase in the face of such plain warnings was recklessness that constitutes an aggravating factor”.

 

An observer with close knowledge of how Everton were operating during that period suggests this summer 2022 splurge under Lampard — after they had bent over backwards to help Everton comply — “is what really pissed off the Premier League”.

 

However, Everton could point to the fact they only spent around £10 million net in summer 2022 (having recouped £60 million by selling Richarlison) and that across the past three seasons they have made a transfer profit. This shows, they might argue, they have taken PSR on board — and that under a new executive, new manager (Sean Dyche) and new director of football (Kevin Thelwell) prudency is a priority in deals.

 

It is hard not to feel this is a club paying for decisions made by those no longer there, such as the former director of football Marcel Brands, the former chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale, and the chief finance and strategy officer Grant Ingles who, during the disputed period, liaised with the Premier League on behalf of the club. Did they misread the warnings the league was issuing about PSR, underestimate the points deduction threat and overestimate their ability to talk Everton out of trouble? We might never know. Both declined to appear before the commission to give evidence that might have helped their former employer.

 

Within Everton’s proud and fiery fan base there is understandable consternation that their club, their littler and less-litigious club, is the first and only club to be punished this way — and for a single breach, when Manchester City — into whom investigations began in 2019 — have been charged with 115 breaches and yet are said to be at least two years away from facing judgment.

 

But if this situation is “unfair on Everton fans” is it fair on fans of clubs relegated while Everton were putting players on the pitch whose recruitment challenged PSR? On Leicester fans? Leicester, after all, are a club who since their 2015-16 title win put PSR at the heart of their strategy, ensuring growth was paid for through the sales of a star player every year.

 

It led them to sell N’Golo Kanté, Riyad Mahrez, Harry Maguire, Ben Chilwell and Wesley Fofana. It caused Brendan Rodgers to be disillusioned after being told he could not make significant signings in 2022, and his regime to go into reverse, ending with relegation. Someone in Leicester’s camp said, “what sticks in the craw, when you’ve done your best to comply, is looking at another club not bothering”. Maybe PSR is exactly like VAR: not working for anyone at the moment and only taking us into a world of unsatisfying arguments and minutiae.

[Vincent Vega]

They really do need to shut the fuck up and take their medicine. They should be thanking their lucky stars that the punishment has arrived in a season where it looks extremely likely that it won’t have serious repercussions.

[Special K]

In loving all the "You've awakened the Kraken" bollocks that's started sprouting up online

 

Cheats

[AngryOfTuebrook]

Ooh, this is scary.  "Millions" of them are going to make the Premier League rue the day they *checks notes* correctly enforced the rules.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

I don't know how the Premier League will survive this.

[Scott_M]

It would have been piss funny for them to lose at Woodison next weekend, especially if it’s on the back of a contentious VAR decision, if wasn’t for the fact they are playing the mancs. 

[manwiththestick]

5 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Ooh, this is scary.  "Millions" of them are going to make the Premier League rue the day they *checks notes* correctly enforced the rules.

Dominoes 'found out'? Last I checked they were still in business.

 

Balague 'found out'? Is he now out of work or something?

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

Millions my arse haha.

[Anubis]

15 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Ooh, this is scary.  "Millions" of them are going to make the Premier League rue the day they *checks notes* correctly enforced the rules.

 

Pretty sure Domino’s and Balague survived their onslaught.

 

All the PL need to do is use the option ‘only accounts mentioned can reply’ and they’re fucked.

 

 

[Le Duan]

1 hour ago, Scott_M said:

Wouldn’t surprises me if that was a delaying tactic. 
 

Admit it straight away and the case might have been completed before the end of the season, which was the PL’s original request,  and certain relegation
 

Contest and delay as much as possible in the hope they find themselves in a better position, which unfortunately, they are. 

Sounds a lot like Donald Trump tactics which makes sense, he’s a hateful, spiteful, deluded, entitled cunt as well

[Bob]

Everton just can’t catch a fucking break.

 

just when you thought they’d suffered enough… now Onana* has been sent home from internationals injured and will miss the game at the weekend.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67461497

[AngryOfTuebrook]

8 minutes ago, VERBAL DIARRHEA said:

Millions my arse haha.

If they had millions of fans they wouldn't be in this mess.

[Scott_M]

23 minutes ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

Ooh, this is scary.  "Millions" of them are going to make the Premier League rue the day they *checks notes* correctly enforced the rules.

Dominos found out…

 

[Scott_M]

Domino’s mocked Everton on 27th April 2022.

 

This is their share price in the immediate aftermath…

 

 

Yeah, Dominos mocked us and we showed them by their share price increasing. That’ll teach them.

[Anubis]

I’ve never seen a fanbase with such an overinflated sense of their own importance.

 

[Tenfolder]

Fuck me, they really have doubled down on the Premier League/FA/PGMOL are out to get us mentality with all this haven't they, seriously hope they get sued and lose another 9 points due to administration.

As has been mentioned they should take their medicine and stfu, they've been given an absolute gift both by the PL helping them at every turn and with the points deduction happening the season they already look more than safe from going down, it'll probably at most be the difference between them finishing 10th/11th and 14th.

[Scott_M]

The Ev’s beef with Domino’s was obviously incredibly memorable…

 

[VladimirIlyich]

Middlesborough had a 3 pt PL deduction in the 90s which helped relegate them.

[Anubis]

At least it makes it easier for the officials to keep an eye on them for cheating….

 

[Scott_M]

38 minutes ago, Anubis said:

 

Pretty sure Domino’s and Balague survived their onslaught.

 

Don’t you know that wherever Balague goes now, he’s accompanied by an elite squad of Navy Seal bodyguards to protect him from rabid Everton fans who resent him for….. dunno, but definitely something. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

Every other premier league club should kick off over their covid losses bullshit. They've been protected to hell and they are still crying about being punished. It's the teams who went down who should feel aggrieved not Everton and every club that dropped points playing them. 

[aws]

Just now, Bobby Hundreds said:

Every other premier league club should kick off over their covid losses bullshit. They've been protected to hell and they are still crying about being punished. It's the teams who went down who should feel aggrieved not Everton and every club that dropped points playing them. 

and every club continuing to drop points because of the players they cheated to buy. 

[Scott_M]

9 minutes ago, VladimirIlyich said:

Middlesborough had a 3 pt PL deduction in the 90s which helped relegate them.

I still think they’ll stay up this season.
 

I think the bigger impact will be potential law suites by Leeds, Leicester, Watford & Burnley. 
 

Obviously Sheff Utd v WHU after the Tevez / Mascherano issues shows previous.

 

The clubs settled out of court with WHU paying Sheff Utd £15m. I assume it would be very easy to  argue TV / sponsorship deals etc mean any settlement would be more than that these days.

[Strontium]

2 hours ago, Jarvinja Ilnow said:

Any of you gentlemen of Twitter/X able to contact their fact check department and set them on that odious wankstain Carragher re his latest:

"but when you consider 6 clubs tried to leave the PL & there was no sanction at all it doesn’t feel right."

 

There's already a proposed Community Note against that post on Twitter, pointing out that it's a load of bollocks.

 

You won't be able to see it yet unless you're a Community Notes contributor, but I have just rated it Helpful.