A verdict on Everton’s appeal against a ten point deduction is due any day now.
With the club lingering above the relegation zone on goal difference alone, their fans will feel a whole lot better about their survival prospects with a few – or a lot – of those points back.
The charge from the Premier League is that Everton tried to secure an “unfair sporting advantage” by spending £19.5million more than profit and sustainability rules allow over a three year period. An overspend of £6.5million per year.
For that, the league maintains that a ten point penalty must stand. In fact, they have levelled a further charge against Everton, partly for the same period. That is likely to come with a points deduction as well.
But what exactly do they mean by “unfair sporting advantage”?
A closer inspection shows a somewhat flexible application of the term.
Casino spending
Ever since the government decided Something Needed To Be Done about casino spending in football, the Premier League has felt it needed to sharpen its talons and draw some serious blood.
Maybe even inflict a fatal injury.
This would be the same Premier League that demurred from doling out too harsh a penalty to six clubs who tried to gain permanent access to elite European football (in the form of the now shop-soiled European Super League) without the pesky need to earn it through actual football on the pitch. You might call that an Unfair Sporting Advantage. You might call this an attempt to subvert the entire football pyramid, an attempt to not only gain sporting advantage in the short term but forever more.
The Premier League’s response was to “punish” the six clubs – Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham and Man Utd – with £3 million fines. Or the equivalent of the wages of six or eight players for one week.
FFP woes are not limited to Everton
Let’s not forget as well that Man City face their own charges of FFP. At the last count this extended to 115 breaches. We are told that a hearing will happen in due course.
When is it? Good question.
Let’s remind ourselves what Premier League chief executive Richard Masters had to say.
“There is a date set for that proceeding. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you when that is, but it is progressing.”
It almost feels like fans are being told we don’t need to worry our pretty little heads with such trifles. Just keep bunging £30 a month to Sky and watch the football and let the Premier League pat us on our heads.
Is now a good time to mention Man City also got a favourable 250-year-rental on stadium back in 2008, following Manchester’s Commonwealth Games? They pay £5.5million a year in rent and make about £55million in gate receipts per season.
West Ham pay £2.9million a year to use the Olympics stadium in Stratford. This does not cover the cost to run every matchday for a whole season. The rest of the bill is picked up by the taxpayer.
Unfair Sporting Advantage?
And for precedent, let’s see how clubs were dealt with in the past for FFP breaches.
Leicester City were ordered to pay a £3.1million fine for a breach relating to the period they became the most unlikely Premier League champions of all time.
Hull City and Manchester United were fined £140,000 and £257,000 respectively for FFP breaches by UEFA.
Amortized payments
Chelsea have spent nearly a billion quid since Todd Boehly bought the club from government-sanctioned Abrahamovic and torpedoed the club from Champions League winners to mid table obscurity. Their loophole? Amortized payments. That is, spreading the say, £88.5million the club splashed on Mykhailo Mudryk over a seven year period. A loophole since closed. At least they had the nous to find the loophole.
Nous is something seriously lacking in the brains trust at Goodison Park.
Scattergun approach
Everton have been catastrophically run for as long as memory serves, and lost their spot amongst the elite about three and a half decades ago. For a brief spell between 2017-2020, they tried to spend their way back to the top, but naive shopping saw them spend big on any player that could do a few keepy-ups and left the club with a poor squad at high cost.
The cack-handed and scattergun approach won them few friends, fewer trophies, and made them the butt of many jokes.
The club is now in a protracted takeover by hedge funders 777 Capital – who come with their own colourful history, while current owner Farhad Moshiri is nowhere to be seen. The chaos and vacuum of power at the club is such that the main man fronting the appeal seems to be Andy Burnham, lifelong Everton fan, but currently Mayor of Greater Manchester.
Embed from Getty ImagesA fair outcome
So what is a fair outcome?
Leeds and Burnley will say they played by the rules and were relegated in Everton’s stead during the period of alleged financial mismanagement. They would argue that Everton deserve to be punished. They have a point.
But is FFP itself fair?
Let’s take Newcastle United. Bought by the Saudi Royal Family, who aren’t short of a few quid, and brilliantly managed by Eddie Howe. Last season they came in the top four and qualified for the Champions League. A great achievement.
This year, beset by injuries, they are hovering outside the European qualification places in 8th.
During the last transfer window they wanted to buy players to help them in their push to get back to the top four, yet they bought no one.
Why?
Because FFP didn’t allow them.
That means they face a struggle to finish in the top six, let alone the top four.
This will likely mean the same old faces will qualify the Champions League – drawn from the same crew that dabbled with the European Super League.
In turn this will mean they will make more money and have more spending power to consolidate their position in the next transfer window, while other clubs like Newcastle remain hamstrung.
How is a challenger club supposed to compete with these rules?
Is this not all a bit unfair?
Spending limits
In truth, the only way to ensure no Unfair Sporting Advantage is gained by spending alone is by introducing a salary and transfer cap akin to the NFL. This would mean no club could exceed an agreed spending limit that applies to all clubs. That would truly would mean a level playing field.
Of course that will never happen, so is the fairest thing then, to do away with FFP and give every team a sporting chance?
For now Everton are sweating on the outcome of this appeal, and a subsequent charge. A further points deduction will make relegation much more likely, and that comes with its own potentially catastrophic straightening of the finances.
When you consider what other clubs have been allowed to do, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Everton are being punished for trying to secure the wrong type of Unfair Sporting Advantage.
Feature image: The copyright on this image is owned by Graham Hogg and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license
