Everton fans gathered outside the Premier League headquarters in London to protest against the club's 10-point penalty for breaking financial rules. Photo: PA/Eui Mok
About 30 Everton fans gathered outside the Premier League offices in west London on Friday evening. It was such a well-mannered protest that the police present were simply talking among themselves.
It was a short walk from the office of the late Bill Kenwright in Little Venice, who himself knew, as well as any football fan, that it is impossible to change the allegiance of a lifetime. Players and coaches come and go, but a fan's loyalty lasts a lifetime — or a life sentence, depending on your point of view. Many of these Everton fans were returning home from work, and only one brought any banner with them.
It was a copy of the current social media protests, which featured the Premier League logo and matching font with the sentence «Corrupt» on a fans' banner. The same message was conveyed by Everton fans over the Etihad Stadium on Saturday and it is, by any measure, a serious allegation. It also reflects the febrile mood that followed Everton's 10-point drop last week. Not only fans, but also experts, TV presenters and MPs criticized the trial, which lasted for years. One that was run by an independent panel headed by David Phillips QC and returned a 40-page verdict.
Gary Neville called the Premier League a «defunct organization» given what he saw as the vested interests of the 20 clubs. Neville claimed the top flight had merely paid a £22 million fine to six Super League rebels in 2021, which became Exhibit A in the case against the Premier League.
The reality was that nothing in the Premier League rules as they stood in April 2021 covered the issue, which was, after all, about the departure of six players from UEFA competitions rather than the Premier League. The league board had to decide on individual punishment. Soon after, the Premier League rewrote its laws. The Premier League's current fine for joining a breakaway European league is an immediate deduction of 30 points.
As for the endless comparisons to the Manchester City case, those 115 charges are simply a much tougher fight for the Premier League. League. Everton eventually admitted earlier this year that they had breached profit and sustainability rules (PSR). City authorities continue to deny all wrongdoing.
Corrupt? What would this look like in reality for the Premier League? Who should be involved in this matter? Of course, all the managers of the office where the protests took place. Also Alison Brittain, former chief executive of Whitbread, a publicly traded company worth around £6bn, and now chairman of the Premier League. Add in the rest of the league's board, including three independent directors. Add to that most of the 19 other club bosses, given how obsessed they are with the internal affairs of the Premier League.
The rules must mean something
A three-member panel would then need to be appointed to independently consider the case, starting with Mr. Phillips K.C. This would require around 100 people — lawyers, executives, club owners and directors — and all of them risk ruined careers and reputations, as well as potential criminal charges. All this means that Everton could be relegated.
Let us remind you: Everton admitted to violating the PSR. The club lost £304 million during the monitoring period in question, for which the rules only allow losses of £105 million. Taking into account the additional PSR costs approved by the Premier League, this amount was more than halved to £120.8 million.
A £39.3 million investment in the stadium, which should have been set aside as pre-cost planning, has been cancelled. The club categorically failed to prove that the loan agreement between the companies justified the payment of £13.6 million in interest, which Everton said was incurred because stadium finance costs were excluded from the PSR calculation. Everton have even tried to reduce the transfer fee that each club includes in their PSR. In the end, the problem was not a failure to cut costs, but a failure to stop spending.
22 MPs, mostly from the Labor Party, but also from the DUP and SNP, signed the petition, which said, among other things, that the points deduction «does not have any legal or equitable basis or justification for the level of sanctions». I wonder what the aforementioned Mr. Phillips K.S. thinks about this? If anyone was hoping for some restraint on the part of these politicians in a complex legal case, then, unfortunately, it was not enough. They saw the bandwagon and jumped on it.
At some point the rules have to mean something — and it could be argued that the Premier League have weakened Everton as much as possible to erase a £180m loss from their PSR calculations. After five years of wild spending with Farhad Moshiri, the club simply could not get there. Everton fans once felt so strongly about Moshiri's regime that the board were unable to visit Goodison Park. It is not surprising that the protests of chaos fans then led to serious sanctions.
To the club's credit, the new stadium is still under construction and the accompanying £1.3 billion boost to the local economy may have some appeal. But clubs such as Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford have recently built new stadiums without breaching the PSR. Stadium construction costs are not included in PSR losses, but they also do not absolve a club from wrongdoing when costs elsewhere get out of control.
The state regulator will change little for Everton in the current conditions. Moshiri would still have been confirmed as the club's majority owner in 2018. The Premier League will still apply PSR — although it is hoped the proposed updated version of squad spending will be less forgiving in the short term and potentially attacking. problems before.
In the meantime, one can only hope that the difficult, unpopular and vital work of regulation can one day be implemented. The Football League regularly deducts points for financial irregularities. It could be said that the strength of the Premier League is that this happens so rarely, and it would certainly be helpful if more people decided to read Everton's decision before rushing in with their own.
< All things considered, these Everton fans at the Premier League office on Friday expressed their views in a civilized manner. Even so, when someone claims corruption and MPs openly question the rule of law, there is always the possibility of unintended consequences. Not everyone has to agree with the outcome. But all clubs agreed to this process.
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