The Premier League’s decision to dock Everton 10 points for breaches of profit and sustainability rules continues to reverberate around English football.
The repercussions will be felt not just at Goodison Park but across the league as teams adjust to a new-look league table and other clubs also under investigation for alleged financial breaches sweat on their own possible punishments.
Our Everton correspondent Patrick Boyland, football correspondent David Ornstein and senior football news reporter Matt Slater joined Ayo Akinwolere for an edition of The Athletic Football Podcast to discuss the big issues.
This is an edited version of their conversation – the full recording is here:
Ayo Akinwolere: Matt, let’s start with you. How did they get into this mess?
Matt Slater: I suppose the big picture is years of overspending under Farhad Moshiri. He bought into the club in early 2016 with a goal of returning Everton to the top table and he knew that was going to require spending. And he did. And as part of his plan he also wanted to give them an amazing new stadium. So he was trying to do two expensive things at once. And then you throw Covid into the mix, which hurt everybody.
But then you throw in something that’s quite unique to Everton, which is their close reliance on Moshiri’s business partner Alisher Usmanov, a very rich Russian oligarch. Usmanov’s companies were big sponsors of Everton and an Usmanov company was going to be the naming-rights partner at the stadium. Usmanov got sanctioned about a week or so after the Russian-Ukraine situation really kicked off and Everton had to sever those ties.
And Everton lost £370million over three years, £430million over five years. Just staggering losses. So that’s how they got in the mess.
Ayo Akinwolere: Paddy, how have Everton responded?
Patrick Boyland: The first and probably the most important thing to say is that they will appeal against the sanction, and that needs to be done within the next week or so.
The mood has been, first of all, shock. And then second of all, defiance. The shock part is that I don’t think anybody at the club expected it to be quite as severe as it is. Initially, they said they were not guilty and then they changed their plea, which looks bad. But even within what they’re arguing now, I think there’s kind of logic that they feel as though 10 points is extremely severe.
Everton fans are angry at their club’s punishment (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Ayo Akinwolere: David, what about the wider football community?
David Ornstein: There are so many different schools of thought around the industry. Many feel Everton gambled and (wonder if) these current rules are designed to maintain the status quo. Is it possible for anybody to challenge the established elite? Everton gave it a go and they didn’t do it very well in terms of some of their spending and sackings and appointments, but they tried and they tried to do it quickly.
The commission report outlines how Moshiri wanted to invest heavily early on in the hope of not having to later, because by that point you would be in Europe, you’d bring on those revenues. So it was there in theory, but the practicality was very different. And there will be others who say, ‘Well, we complied.’ Leicester City, for example, have run a really tight ship. We’ve seen them sell their top player pretty much every year.
I think there was a lot of complacency around Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules across the league, now called profit and sustainability. The clubs run the league and so when you’re sailing close to the wind, as Everton admitted they had been, (the belief is) that, ‘We’ll find a way around it. We’ll work with the Premier League. They’ll let us off.’ But the threat of an independent regulator seems to have shifted the mood. The Premier League doesn’t want to be externally regulated and they now appear to be getting tough. There is a feeling across the league that we better get our houses in order.
GO DEEPER
Everton’s 10-point deduction: Why is the sanction so steep and what does it mean for the Premier League?
Patrick Boyland: David makes a really interesting point around precedent and deterrent, because the commission actually uses the word “deterrent” in its summary. From Everton’s point of view, they might take issue with being the deterrent.
The other interesting thing is that we talk about the 41-page report, and 38 pages are dedicated to the back and forth between the Premier League and Everton commission’s adjudication. Three pages at the end go towards the punishment and what the punishment should be.
There is a bit where the Premier League effectively dictate what they think the punishment should be. They give a framework. That framework, for those that don’t know, is six points for any breach. Plus I think it’s one point for every £5million over the allotted amount you are. Everton were found to be £19.5m over. Bizarrely, within that section, they say that they reject the Premier League’s framework but we still end up at the same number. So I think it’s quite light on evidence there.
One of the other things is there is no precedent here. So how are we able to to judge what is accurate or not?
David Ornstein: I just wanted to pick up on one point that Paddy made and throw it over to Matt. When you read through the commission report, there’s a huge amount said and written about interest payments on the stadium build. Now, Everton are in this position because they’ve spent too much money on players. But many will struggle to correlate how they get thrown to this precipice all because of a debate around an interest payment.
Everton’s new stadium (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Matt Slater: The way to think about this is to not forget that really big number: £370million. They lost that. They got nailed because they massively overspent. And when the Premier League wrote that rule, they didn’t think anyone would get anywhere near £105m – they gave everyone this great big cushion. And Everton had sailed very close to it and then did cross the line.
Now, one of the things we learned from this ruling is that Everton and the Premier League (made) an agreement in August 2021 when I would argue Everton had a bit of a result and the Premier League agreed… that anything they spent on the stadium is no longer part of FFP.
So then we get to the following year. They’ve gone over the threshold again and, at that point, Everton are like, ‘Well we had some more pre-planning permission expenses than we thought. And it’s been a complicated build.’ But they started claiming more add-backs. And that’s where you got the Premier League saying: ‘Hold on a minute. Were they loans or were they equity? Because it’s not clear from your books. We’re confused.’
So it really was a great big row between the two, with Everton saying, ‘We’re accounting for it this way’ and the Premier League saying, ‘We don’t think you can.’
David Ornstein: Paddy, weren’t they repeatedly warned by the Premier League about their transfer spending during this period?
Patrick Boyland: That was exactly what I wanted to say. You had an agreement between Everton and the Premier League, whereby effectively Everton had a kind of informal salary cap. The Premier League were granted almost open-book access to Everton’s dealings, not just transfer activity. So they could approve whether Everton signed players or not, and also new contracts. We do see within the submission from the independent commission that Everton stuck to that and that the Premier League effectively ticked Everton’s business off. But it’s also pointed out by the Premier League that they continued to warn Everton that if you go over, this is your fault.
Just the way Matt talks about the chaos of how Everton were treating those accounts, that to me is Moshiri’s Everton: confusion over who’s doing what, board members and owner interfering in areas they shouldn’t be. It’s a lack of strategy.
The huge irony here is that (Moshiri) is seemingly on the way out. The sanction hits Sean Dyche, the players, the fans.
Farhad Moshiri (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Ayo Akinwolere: How has it taken so long for the Premier League to act on something like this?
Matt Slater: It (the Premier League’s attitude) has changed. And the evidence of the change has been in plain sight in that it’s happened in the English Football League, who have really stepped up and started to apply its rulebook. The EFL guideline is you start at -12 and you knock points off for mitigation.
Richard Masters, the Premier League chief executive, he explained these new criteria the Premier League are working towards. And, you know, it suspiciously gets you to -10. But none of those are rules in their rulebooks. And maybe they should be, so we have some certainty.
David Ornstein: If such an arbitrary method got us to this point, does it stand a very small chance of being reduced?
Matt Slater: They probably will do what they should have done in the first place and go hard on mitigation. Say: we are sorry, direction of travel, look how we’ve cut the spending. And I think there is a good chance that they’ll knock some of these points off.
GO DEEPER
Crisis clubs: If it can happen to Everton, it can happen to anyone
Ayo Akinwolere: David, what is the other clubs’ reaction?
David Ornstein: It’s interesting how vocal a lot of them have been. There’s clearly anger at certain clubs who were relegated during this period: Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton and Burnley. They’ll have grievances (and say), ‘We’re going to take legal action and sue for hundreds of millions.’ But let’s see on that front, as my conversations with people suggest that they haven’t reached firm decisions yet.
In terms of the rest of the league, they’ve been surprisingly quiet. They know that this could be them. There are a lot of other clubs who are pushing the limit, or have been at various times in the past who may be in the future, and I’m not really sensing them taking an opportunistic chance to stick the knife in, which is unusual in these situations. It does get quite catty – we saw that over the European Super League.
The proposed Super League divided clubs (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Ayo Akinwolere: Matt, Everton said they will also monitor the decisions made in any other cases concerning profit and sustainability rules. There’s a huge light shining on Chelsea and on Manchester City and their 100-plus allegations. What does this mean for them?
Matt Slater: To draw some sort of direct comparison between Everton’s (punishment) for one big breach, and City’s 115 – we’re not multiplying 115 by 10. That’s not where we’re going.
The City case is very different to Everton. We spent a lot of time saying how complicated the Everton case was but fundamentally it’s actually quite straightforward. It was numbers. There’s no dispute over deception.
City is completely different. What the Premier League have accused City of doing is lying, egregious cheating. That’s a hell of a big accusation. So you’re going to need big proof to back that up. And City completely deny it. It will take a long time to prove and you think about the political stakes of that as well.
But I would say that the Premier League has shown that it is now going to apply its rulebook and take on a shareholder. It’s not quite a new sheriff in town territory, but the sheriff has woken up a bit!
So that’s a key lesson and a precedent kind of has been set. It was 10 points for that so if we prove the big one against City… well, draw your own conclusions. And I would say the same about Chelsea. We haven’t quite got there yet, but they are in similar territory. It is historic, but it is significant. There will be conversations if full guilt is proven, not just about what do we do with them now, but what should we do about what was achieved in the past — stripping titles, that sort of thing. We shall see.
David Ornstein: On Manchester City and potentially Chelsea – and we must add that they haven’t been charged and that City vigorously deny all their charges – the feeling of the public is that by obfuscating, you can gain a stay of execution and continue with business as usual. Everton have put their hands up and in the process they’ve been punished.
Ayo Akinwolere: I want to move on to how Everton get out of this. January is looming. Are there any conversations about any players they might bring in?
David Ornstein: Look, we’re out of the period that they were under investigation for, and Paddy’s outlined how they tried to cut their cloth accordingly. Their books are not in a good way.
So in terms of transfer spending, I don’t know what they have to spend. If anything, those I speak to around the club and the transfer market are still talking about Everton as doing possible loans and loans with options or obligations to buy. There’s very little chat about permanent transfers.
On Tuesday, there’s a Premier League shareholders meeting… and on the agenda is the recommendation to impose a temporary ban on related-party loan signings in the January window. If Everton were taken over by 777, they have a network of clubs and they’re one of the few networks associated with a Premier League team which have, you could argue, superior teams or teams with some really good players they would want to sign. They definitely would if they were allowed to.
If the vote doesn’t pass and Everton’s proposed takeover was sorted by the end of the year, they could bring players in on loan from the likes of Genoa, Vasco da Gama, Standard Liege and others.
I’m hearing more around Everton that clubs might try and take advantage of their financial situation and buy some of their players. There’s there are clubs looking at Jarrad Branthwaite, for example, Amadou Onana and a few others.
Jarrad Branthwaite will be a wanted man (Jess Hornby/Getty Images)
Patrick Boyland: My understanding of Everton’s situation is that there’s not a lot of money around… But if you look at where they are at the moment, with six wins in the last nine.. to me they’ve looked like kind of a mid-table side in terms of results and performances. They might just decide to take a view on where they are in January and think that, if we can get a few wins here, we don’t actually need to spend that much money in January.
Matt Slater: There’s two obvious ways (they get out of this) to me. One, they get bought. And the new guys, whoever they are, are just better — they do the job better, finish the stadium, move into the stadium, the revenues go up. The other way, I’m afraid, is to rinse some of this debt and that’s administration.
But I’m not sure they’d get over two points deductions so that is not what Everton fans would want, or their board. So let’s go with plan A: the takeover. Well, there’s a deal on the table and we’re waiting for regulatory approval. So we shall see.
Ayo Akinwolere: I was going to ask you if this is an attractive club for an investor…
Matt Slater: Yeah, Everton’s a famous club with a big fanbase. It’s not a top-six brand but it’s a solid brand. It’s a distressed asset but it’s not a disaster. And the other thing I would say about them is they have a stadium that’s three-quarters built, two-thirds paid for. It’s going to be really good. That is an attractive business proposition. So there is a way out. It’s just not easy.
Ayo Akinwolere: Paddy, let’s finish on the football. Manchester United are on their way to Goodison Park, their next fixture. If there is an opportunity to bounce back, you’ve got to spot that.
Patrick Boyland: It’s almost perfect in terms of the galvanising effect it’s likely to have. We’ve heard a lot earlier this season about the kind of ‘Everton against the world’ mentality. When there’s a sense of injustice… I wouldn’t want to come and play Everton at Goodison.
(Top photo: Michael Regan/Getty Images)