*Shakes head* Everton again.

[Frank Dacey]

1 hour ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

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

Strange then that they've celebrated so wildly staying in this den of corruption the past two seasons. Equally strange that for a fanbase who loudly proclaim that 'they know their history', that they've forgotten that they were one of the leading movers in the formation of the PL, back in the day when they were one of the Big 5 (don't laugh).

[Harry Squatter]

Each time there's an article about them cheating they always claim that it is wildly inaccurate yet don't say why that is the case.

 

They are like Trump supporters 

[littletedwest]

1 hour ago, Scott_M said:

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. 

" they're trying get him in a headlock "

[Section_31]

The blueshite chief exec is called Mr Chong but he's not, on the face of it at least, Chinese. The plot thickens.

 

[Lee909]

5 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

The blueshite chief exec is called Mr Chong 

 

[Anubis]

Get your banners out boys. It’s protest time.

 

[Anubis]

Well he’d be there if he wasn’t busy sucking off Tories.

 

[halewood pete]

2 hours ago, AngryOfTuebrook said:

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

Millions???

[Pete]

3 hours ago, Special K said:

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

 

Cheats

Isn’t the Kraken skint & soon to be even worse if the affected clubs win any legal cases they bring? 

[Scott_M]

8 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Get your banners out boys. It’s protest time.

 

Some reds should go for a laugh. 

[Megadrive Man]

3 minutes ago, Scott_M said:

Some reds should go for a laugh. 

 

Get @Captain Turdseye to lead a counter protest demanding they get more points taken off them?

[Pete]

Did they consider that ‘attacking’ the organisation that’s just deducted 10 points from them & is watching them like a hawk probably isn’t that clever? 

[Bobby Hundreds]

10 points not enough flags. 

[littletedwest]

30 minutes ago, Megadrive Man said:

 

Get @Captain Turdseye to lead a counter protest demanding they get more points taken off them?

" hang on he looks like Duncan donuts"

[Anubis]

Toffee TV have gone off a cliff. Just occasionally we should be allowed to use crying laughing emojis. This is one of those occasions.

 

[Scott_M]

3 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Toffee TV have gone off a cliff. Just occasionally we should be allowed to use crying laughing emojis. This is one of those occasions.

 

They support The Ev, suffering from mental health issues is labeled on the tin. 
 

What about the supporters who were relegated because of their disregard for the rules?
 

Alternatively, they could look at their own club for ignoring repeated warnings and admitting they broke the rules. 

[Code]

7 hours ago, Bob said:

If city lose titles they shouldn’t be awarded, just removed.

 

it means nothing to win a title unless you get to celebrate winning the title. 
 

Those titles would have an asterisk next to them anyway, so far better to be * no winner.

What a crazy logic.

[KMD7]

4 hours ago, Vincent Vega said:

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.

 

What I'm getting from this is that it's all Rafa's fault. 

[Bob]

Just now, Code said:

What a crazy logic.

What’s crazy?

 

Winning it a few years ago wasn’t the joy we should’ve had because of covid and being kept away from the game and no parades.

 

being awarded a title we didn’t “win” isn’t going to have me jumping up and down in delight in my living room. 
 

Take it off the cheats. Forever have it clear they didn’t win those titles.

 

that’ll do.

[Tj hooker]

I've been going through Duncans @Captain Turdseye posts over on GOT how the fuck have you not been rumbled is beyond me , more power to your elbow mate 

[Scott_M]

5 minutes ago, Bob said:

What’s crazy?

 

Winning it a few years ago wasn’t the joy we should’ve had because of covid and being kept away from the game and no parades.

 

being awarded a title we didn’t “win” isn’t going to have me jumping up and down in delight in my living room. 
 

Take it off the cheats. Forever have it clear they didn’t win those titles.

 

that’ll do.

I’m not even bothered about them being stripped of titles. 
 

I’d rather whatever the punishment going forwards would be harsher. 
 

For example…

 

1) Lose their Premiership titles and a 30 point deduction

 

or 

 

2) A 60 point deduction

 

… then I chose option 2. 

[Section_31]

[Code]

10 minutes ago, Bob said:

What’s crazy?

 

Winning it a few years ago wasn’t the joy we should’ve had because of covid and being kept away from the game and no parades.

 

being awarded a title we didn’t “win” isn’t going to have me jumping up and down in delight in my living room. 
 

Take it off the cheats. Forever have it clear they didn’t win those titles.

 

that’ll do.

We have lost titles because another team cheated using financial doping we deserve those titles, the club deserve those titles, the players deserve those titles, the staff deserve those titles. 
 

Yes we could not celebrate them at the time, shit happens, but we still deserve them and should obviously get them. 

[Anubis]

As somebody pointed out, at 5.30pm on a Friday afternoon, anyone of any standing at the PL is going to be in a gentleman’s club with a glass of whisky and a Cuban cigar.

[VERBAL DIARRHEA]

PTSD? They should be considering sueing Everton themselves for continuous mental trauma, false dawns and stolen hope.

But we all know they love the failure, their bitter hearts crave and thrive off it.