Summary of the Commission decision

Hopefully part of our appeal will be based on, not only leaks, to certain media outlets prior to the official announcement, but more importantly on the make up of the "Independent" Commission.

I believe we should expect absolutely no change in the decision already made.
All our focus, from every part of Evertonia, should be on us getting well clear of the relegation zone asap by our own efforts.

If there was EVER, any doubt as to the corruption at the highest level in the Premier League, with rules of one set of clubs and rules for a different set of clubs, that doubt has been utterly eradicated.

One other thing is crystal clear. The Premier League is making it up as it goes along and is enforcing rules, or not enforcing rules that benefit it's agenda.

For the good of the game? My arse.

The points that stick out to me are:

'No evidence of Sigurdsson's psychological state'. It was self explanatory. He had just been charged with a child sex offence. He obviously would not have been in a good place and Everton should have been commended for what they did for him, losing a lot of money in the process.

Dismissing the affect a covid worldwide pandemic had on transfers I find completely ridiculous. Of course it had a massive affect on transfers.

You can see why we have had so many refereeing and VAR decisions given against us. The lower we are in the league, the less money we are given, the worse our financial position looked.

And whoever conducted Everton's defence did an abysmal job!

But the biggest thing that sticks out is:

PREMIER LEAGUE CORRUPTION

How we haven’t been able to recover any money for a £45 million pound player who was eventually sacked, doesn’t really show any leniency, and as always there does appear to be at least a couple of contradictions, although that maybe just the way I’ve read things.

A fairer punishment would have been a transfer ban for 12 months and possibly a less extreme points deduction (3 to 6 pts). But to some extent, I can see why they're making a scapegoat out of us.

The big argument for all football fans should be about the lack of a level playing field.

When FFP (which is anything but 'fair') was introduced more than 10 years ago, along with the P&S rules, the governing bodies have deliberately reduced the ability for smaller clubs (in terms of turnover) to compete. They have dressed it up as protecting clubs from going bankrupt, but we all know the real reason.

The likes of Man Utd, City, rs, Chelsea and to a lesser extent, Spurs and Arsenal, can stay within the restrictions of P&S/FFP and yet spend 2 to 3 times more money on transfers and wages than we can when we break the rules!!!

Something has to change, but I bet it only gets worse.

But they didn't want to and the government independent regulator needs to act immediately, get involved, suspend our unjust points deduction and look at the whole picture. It stinks.

It is therefore vital that we get this judgment overturned. if we don't it's difficult to see how we don't go under. it will be a miracle if 777 stick around, now that the commission have stuck a £100m negative over our head.

It's not just paranoia, this commission have absolutely trid to fuck us up. And all ijn the name of not wanting clubs to get in over their head. What a sick joke

We can get this overturned though. It is disproportionate. It isn't fair. We need to never let the powers that be forget that we've been wronged, even in the event we avoid relegation.

Effectively, you can gain a competitive advantage and pay the price at a later date.

Our focus needs to be on applying pressure on the league to overturn this points deduction. We're on the right side of the argument on this issue.

Everton were responsible for their own position, the question now is can we have the point reduction reduced.

Just on some other points raised here1) Other potentially affected clubs can definitely sue is, no question, and there is a clear sporting advantage accrued- otherwise why do the P&S rules exist in the first place? But the issue is, how do you quantify that advantage. Applicants for compensation will need to do this and that could be much easier to defend than our P&S machinations and 2) It is possible that 777 is pretty sanguine about compensation costs because it is suggested they have a hefty allowance built into the sale agreement, which means it will be deducted from Moshiri's proceeds.

That strikes me as just that the owner fronts up on the costs of his stupidity. Less so are the charlatans posing as our board making off with big payouts before the proverbial hit the fan

There is an opportunity for the aggrieved clubs to seek compensation, David Phillips KC states this in the report dated 9 May 2023 citing the names of the clubs involved:

Leeds United

Nottingham Forest

Southampton

Leicester City

Burnley

20. One, I find that if the complaint is upheld, the Commission may wish to award W.51.5

compensation to one or more of the applicant clubs.

22. Three, I direct that if the complaint is upheld, the Premier League must provide a copy of the

decision to the applicant clubs forthwith. Within 28 days of receipt of a copy of the decision,

each applicant club must inform the Commission whether it wishes to pursue a claim for W.51.5

compensation.

Seeing as the complaint was upheld, all of those clubs can seek compensation, you can bet at least one will go for it, and then we'll be at the mercy of another or is it the same Commission, who'll decide whether those clubs are due compensation and then we'll find out how much compensation, if any, each club is awarded. Therefore, there must be some 'real' grounds, else it would have been stopped before our Commission sat in judgement.

So the EPL uses an argument, that suits its cause using the EFL as reference but argues against EFC, when they attempt to do the same.

It stinks and something is very amiss here.

How can the Invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctioning of the USM company not be a mitagating factor.

Did EFC mention in their defence that they did not look to borrow money from the government as Arsenal and Spurs did during the Covid pandemic.

I see the West Derby MP, Ian Byrne has arranged to bring this up in Parliament. At the end of the day, the powers that be in the EPL will regret how this has been handled. They may have signed their own death warrants. I hope so.

PS: Lyndon please make sure Ian Byrne is made aware of your article concerning the make up of the Commision and the conflicts of interest.

I reckon we are the only club to have spent 200m without recouping a penny in transfer fees.

We have been run by weak management for ages and this proves the point. We are soft touches and have been for over 25 years, "what would Everton do"

Nevertheless we are being made an example of when other clubs have flirted with the rules and not faced this type of punishment.

We may have good grounds for appeal due to the contradictions of the findings and severity. The impartiality is also very questionable.

The precedent of not wanting fans to suffer applies more to us than any of the breakaway 6, who's fans have been spoilt to the point of entitlement in an increasingly uneven playing field.

At what point does this end for us?

We need a massive reset. We need to get rid of as many hangers on as possible and start again.
If we stay up this season what happens next season with potential new owners wanting their piece of an ever decreasing pie.

It's been horrible to support us for over 20 years. We have barely laid a glove on teams that we used to regularly beat. A steady downward spiral and this is the culmination of it.

Add to that the likelihood of further charges relating to our accounts for the years following the one we've already been fucked for and it's a bleak picture.

Unless all these points get rescinded, I can't help feeling we'll go out of business off the back of all this.

Having said that, I tend to change my mind about 12 times a day given how much noise there is right now.

I mean, it's weak right? Could we have sued for 10M? Would we have won? Did he even have 10M to pay? Would the 10M have come in the right timeframe to make a difference?

And the fact is, we chose not to do it

It's pretty fanciful thinking.

Having followed your detailed financial reports over the last few years I’d imagine you must be the least surprised by the commission’s findings.

You’ll take little comfort, no doubt, in your being proved right to repeatedly highlight our financial fragility as you did.

My question to you is when did we know we were squarely in the firing line and could we ever have done enough to avoid this?

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/67477429

Whilst Everton did break the guidelines the mitigating circumstances were not properly considered.In the grand scheme of things the punishment was disprotionate and it is unlikely that this standard will be applied to other Clubs that have or close to breaching the rules.The suggested open ended opportunity for compensation is purely pressure driven and without practical consideration.

'Sport Law and Practice :Regulating Sporting 2015.

3.In addition to these measures, any club losing more than £105m in aggregate across the reporting period.

4. may be charged with breach of the Premier League rules and referred to a disciplinary commission with broad powers to: reprimand the club, impose an unlimited fine, suspend the club from playing, deduct points from the club, order matches to be replayed, recommend expulsion of the club, order compensation, ban registrations, or impose such other penalty as it thinks fit.

5. To date, no club has been found to have such losses and therefore no sanctions have been imposed.'

To be fair to the commission, our trend on P&S was the one area we were granted mitigation. All the others failed, partly because they had been previously used in a vain attempt to come up with a sum well below £100m.

Take for example, the USM 'deal'. We claimed that funds were due to be provided to use years before the opening. Setting aside why anyone would pay for naming rights on a stadium that is a couple of years short of being complete, we might have swung this had there been a shred of evidence, some sort of agreement, that money was going to be forthcoming before end of 2022. Needless to say, we had nothing to offer so needless to say, the commission concluded we were making it up.

With Everton’s judgement and punishment raised in Parliament in an early day motion, the discussion will be about the PL acting as judge and jury, whilst hiding behind so called independence, when one of the panellists has a conflict of interests, having previously represented Leeds in other legal cases.

Having set the benchmark on punishment for Everton, how on earth can any future decisions for other clubs be a level playing field? There is absolutely no standardised formula to arrive at the scale of punishment. It’s make it up as you go along!

Should the ‘so called’ big six be hit with anything like a ten point deduction or worse, I can see the Super League/ Diamond League issue being back on the agenda, and what action will the PL take then? They might just have shot themselves in the foot, losing their brand and ably assisting the formation of a breakaway league.

Wait for the U-turn.

Our focus should have been on the fact that the FA banned him for being investigated, while other players were not banned when charged with a crime. It was the FA that directly led to the loss of valuation of that player in both the accounts and any potential resale value!

And that was arbitrary and not down to us.

So why didn't the Club focus on that instead of a spurious 'naming rights before the stadium is even built' strategy!

And didn't we continue to pay Player X as he was not charged with a crime? Where was that in our mitigation???

The Commission in it's remit has tried to apply these sanctions as proportionately as possible, even trying to reduce compensation.This has exposed how impractical the remit of sanctions are when one breach has been committed in that multi breaches could see a team expelled from the Premier League, since any other application of sanctions is totally impracticable.

The Premier League does have the power to appoint a commission which consists of Premier League associates.Where they got Independent is anybody's guess, since there is no reference to such a thing. It was never going to be Independent.

Ironically there are now calls for a Government Regulator to scale back the application of these sanctions, because they are disproportionate and impractical to implement.The complete opposite of what was originally intended by the Premier League to maintain self regulation.

Whilst we suspended Siggy, am not sure whether he was actually banned by the FA for being investigated.

Hopefully we can make a much better and proper case at the appeal.

Mitigation claims.....Commission says, "No".

Perhaps we should be loudly considering arguing this in a real Court where the law of the land promulgated by case precedent rules.

All of the bookings will still remain on the record, so the players will be suspended in the usual way, even though 70% of the points they gained will be lost. It renders the matches that Everton have played already and that we as fans have paid to watch, mostly meaningless. Financial indiscretions should be punished with financial sanctions, attempts to govern finances by inflicting a reduction of points is not within the spirit of the game.

There's a slim possibility that Everton could be brought before the beak again, once our latest accounts are scrutinised in the near future, which could also result in another points penalty and therefore some of the points that we may add to our current tally, might be taken off us, which would then make a total mockery of our season, as we could have almost half-a-season's worth of football, but only so many of those games would register the points that we won out on the pitch.

Perhaps they will suggest that Everton only get two points for a win and our opponents should get four when playing Everton, for as long as we remain in the Premier League, I don't believe that it's a witch-hunt against Everton, just some very short-sighted administrators trying to placate the sinful six and they've tied themselves in knots and they don't have a clue how to run the game, because all they can see is the pound signs.

I got sick of saying this on the other thread, and I think everyone got sick of me saying it... but...

... Everyone needs to consider that we didn't fall foul of the league's rules by just 19.5M. We were 124.5M over the target set by P&S rules. We were 109.5M over the point at which they start taking action.

We were 19.5M over the point at which their rules give them no leeway but to charge us and refer us to a commission. That's a huge buffer before you get charged.

You're not supposed to get anywhere near that number. We smashed through it.

The number is there so that you have some buffer for things like the mitigations we claimed. But we were operating right at the limit already.

I think you would need to ask the club why they didn't do that, but the commission deals only with what is presented to them. To be honest, I doubt they would have been all that sympathetic. To repeat a point I made earlier, which informs their finding, the actual P&S target is zero loss over the period. A loss of over £15m is considered sanctionable. The £105m figure is a hard ceiling. Unfortunately we (and maybe some other clubs out there?) have treated the latter as a target, not a hard ceiling, and sailed way too close to the sun.

The commission re-iterated that the whole point of this ceiling was to give clubs plenty of wiggle room, or at least those who were genuinely trying to conform to the actual P&S target. I suspect the commission might also have taken the view that unless USM's arrangement was in truth not commercial at all, and was a sum that no other partner would dream of paying, then we ought to have been able to at least partially mitigate the loss. We might be best not trying to push that point too much?

On your subsequent post, the findings indicate we stopped paying Siggy a month after the news of the police investigation. I must admit that was news to me. What we were raising as defence/mitigation was that the accusation meant we couldn't cash in on his transfer value and we could have sued him for this. However, given Mendy is now suing City for his loss of wages, having not been convicted, I suggest we might be on rocky ground with that.

If we don't do that, and continually argue each point of mitigation, we'll eventually get to a place where we find ourselves agreeing with the Premier League's stance and the Commissions draconian punishment.

How do we help the club get those points back? We will of course get behind the club in the stadium, but how can we put pressure on the League to overturn the points deduction, or at the very least have that points deduction suspended. Letters / emails to MP's, media outlets, the Premier League itself?
e.g.
Dear x,
I/We readily agree that Everton Football Club is guilty of breaching the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability rules, I/we also realise that breaking those rules should result in some form of punishment, however, an immediate deduction of points in the current season, hardly protects the notion of sporting integrity.

Instead of the immediate points deduction, it may well be beneficial for the purposes of sporting integrity, to have the deduction suspended until the start of next season, better still it would be more appropriate to have a purely financial penalty for a purely financial misdemeanor.
Yours X

They really should have thought “Bloody hell, there's going to be a war in Ukraine soon, so we better get something in writing to show the Premier League of our intention to bring forward money from USM for future naming rights, just in case there's any chance of them charging us over PSR”.

For fuck's sake, it had already been well documented that USM had given £30M to have first dabs on the naming rights, so why on earth should they have something in writing to say that payments may be brought forward, even before the stadium is complete?

This is not correct.

You're allowed to lose £105M over a 3 year rolling period

I've always thought that, Paul. I'm amazed that no one has ever challenged P&S on those grounds.

Should they be successful in this transfer, then it would bring their total expenditure over the last two years to about £10 zillion.

Without the backup of any European pots of gold this season, and also a chance they will not be in Europe next season, plus the massive wages they are paying for players recently purchased on ridiculously long contracts, clearly they couldn't give a toss about the possible consequences if found guilty… which we all know of course, will just be a fine and warnings of “Who's a naughty boy, don't do it again” (Followed by several slaps on the wrist!).

I think you are correct. Overall I felt our defence/mitigation was pathetically weak and filleted comprehensively by the commission. We should not re-run those arguments.

Right up to point 138, the commission followed impressive logic. But then read point 139. Basically it just says, 'we reckon it's worth 10 points'. Why not 5 points? 8 Points? Or for that matter 20 points?

There is an element of arbitrariness about it, which is inevitable given the lack of both a tariff or a decent precedent. I think what we can also do, regardless how stupid our board has been, is rally wider support, which is happening. We may be able to win the PR battle...

Not bloody likely, you've opened a can of worms you can't close now, you're in more shit than us.

An independent commission will surely follow. And what they find what the Premier League have been up to, god only knows. And it's all their own fault.

I read that in the report the commission said he was suspended by the FA, so out of our control.

Basically, what he's saying is that they both have the financial clout to pay the corrupt Premier League off, whilst we don't, hence the points deduction. Had we had zillions in the bank, then probably we would got a fine instead.

You're not calling the Premier League corrupt, are you Mr Aldridge?

Man City and Chelsea told why they won't face Everton-style punishment amid FFP charges

It states, “We have no doubt that the circumstances of this case are such that only a sporting sanction in the form of a points deduction would be appropriate. A financial penalty for a club that enjoys the support of a wealthy owner is not a sufficient penalty.”

Let's see the Premier League wriggle out of that one with Man City and Chelsea.

How did Notts Forest sign 30 players in one season? Will they have to hold a fire sale to comply?

I would imagine even Burnley will be in trouble if they get relegated. They and Bournemouth, on paper, appear to have overspent their means.

We're just the tip of an iceberg.

There is talk of an aeroplane, getting ready to fly over the Etihad on Saturday, because it will be too dark to send a message over Goodison by the time the game kicks off on Sunday, but upto now the message being delivered is still undisclosed.

My message would say KOPITES ARE GOBSHITES, BUT THEY SHOULD HAVE WON THE LEAGUE A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, ONLY FOR THE CORRUPT OFFICIALS IN THE EPL, TRYING TO GET EVERTON RELEGATED.

Maybe this is a little bit too long…😂

Presumably that was dismissed on the basis someone on the commission had actually seen us play?

The whole thing just doesn't sit right. We've been in constant dialogue with the Premier Leaguefor the last 3 years. A few months ago we were all thinking that with the key sales we had been forced to make that we could finally get some breathing room.

And then suddenly this all drops on our head from nowhere, 10 points plus 9 points plus compensation to X other clubs just cos we drifted over their arbitrary bullshit limit by £19.5M?

Someone is doing a number on us, I reckon the government are out to get the Russians and their money, and they don't mind torpedoing us in the process if that's what it takes.

I think that the 'Russian' angle is more than a plausible explanation, if we sit back and think about it, who eventually, albeit indirectly, gets the money from the sale of Everton?

The value of Everton will plummet with every blow it receives and it does seem that we will likely have to take a few more heavy punches in the near future.

I'm starting to think that for some time they've probably thought that a 10-12 point point deduction would do the job, and make the roof fall in.

And then along came Sean with his three away wins, and so they had to add in the reference to other clubs suing us, just to make sure.

I heard words to this affect yesterday Barry, with regards it probably being the best thing that could have happened to the purchaser’s of Everton, from a person that told me he was very confident it’s not going to be 777.

I also think this is very plausible Kevin.

They have set up collection points around the ground where we can collect the corrupt signs which they have asked that we display when the teams line up and 10 minutes into the game. I can only assume the club cant let the signs be put on seats inside the ground as maybe the appeal panel may see that as cohesion.
So I hope everyone collects their signs before entering the ground on Sunday. I am sure Lyndon and Michael will do a post about this nearer match time.

Because it will be quite dark when we kick off so they decided to fly a plane with a banner over the Etihad for the Saturday early kick off between city and Liverpool.

I can only thank whoever is responsible at 1878 for the great work they have done in the past and for arranging this protest at the weekend. Also as someone said nobody encroach on the pitch, as we don't want to give the Premier league any excuse to land the club in a worse position. We want everybody to be on our side in this argument and to show we will protest vehemently without breaking any laws.

1878 The Originals. We Shall Not Ever be Moved

Maybe something related to the Prisoners of Prince Rupert's Tower might be apt?!!

Who remembers this...don't think we need any more for the Premier League to think about

Link

Posted by PabloMc2User Info on November 21, 2023, 12:40 pm
should be interesting...

Cards

Plane

Flags (1) Flags (2)

Not convinced about the plane personally, but fair play to them - and I'm delighted that the cards are finally happening, 19 years after suggesting something similar for The Truth protest and to NSNOW/AllTogetherNow/The1878s several times over the last few years!
It should look pretty impressive visually - especially if the Man Utd fans join in...

https://twitter.com/The1878s/status/1726933484017488258?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Some of the key sponsors of the English Premier League are Sorare, EA Sports, Budweiser, Nike, Barclays, Hublot, Oracle, Castrol, Avery Dennison, and Panini. Sorare has the highest number of deal values.

Running such huge losses for almost the entirety of Moshiri's ownership is and should be unacceptable to all Evertonians and we have to ask, has it been worth it?

I'm hoping that all this is the catharsis we need to shake off our long Premier League blues starting with Man U. So COYB!!! let's turn it around for good and return to pre-Premier League competitiveness. In microcosm I took a look at our all-time record against Man U versus our Premier League record against Man U and here are the tallies:

PRE PL ERA Total Matches 148

Wins 59 (39.8%), Draws 32 (21.6%), Lost 53 (35.8%).

PL ERA Total Matches 63

Wins 8 (12.7%), Draws 15 (23.8%), Lost 40 (63.4%)

Let's banish this once and for all!!

Smashing up a coach. Ticketless supporters climbing barriers in Athens to prevent access to many who did have tickets.

The Paris incident, but not their fault.

And let's not forget the 39. The worse offence by a club in English history yet we all got punished. For five years.

I told you. You've started me!! I need to vent on something and the cousins seem a natural darts board.

I wish it was Sunday right now. Bizarrely I can calm down then.

That would imply that 777 do not in fact have a cast iron sale agreement with Moshiri with the much discussed performance criteria in it (the effect of which is to ensure Moshiri pays in full for the costs of this debacle through a much reduced payment for his investment to date)

Does your contact suggest this agreement is not in force? I guess anything is possible in this febrile environment and the most concrete information we have about the club is in the Commission's findings, but apparently 777 have already put £50-80m in the coffers. Moshiri has clearly ceased to want or be able to fund the stadium and our cashflow.

But I also gather that 777 money is not senior debt, in which case they are taking a hell of a risk in losing some or all of that, if they can't force through a sale.

Just another point of the 17 Merseyside MPs only 6 has signed Ian Byrnes early day motion, and no surprise of the ones who have voted for it not 1 is a Conservative. Mind when did they ever consider fairness in their decisions.

Finally Danny, we should be grateful that our local MP Ian Byrne, and our Mayor Steve Rotheram both Reds have been very vocal and vociferous in our defence and attacking Liverpool FC on this matter does you no credit at all. Just like Hillsborough this is something that unites the City and not divides us.

The points appeal panel, will be completely separate and different to, the one that heard our original case.

For 21/22 with a £180m turnover their transfer debt is £130m

For 22/23 with a forecast £205m turnover their transfer debt is further 171m

This season their transfer debt is £108m and who knows what they'll do in January. Ok, CL football will give them an uptake but still, their turnover will only push to around £260m and they're currently 6 points of getting there again.

Thats a combined transfer debt of £409m over 3 years.

Bear in mind too that they already had a transfer debt of a combined £75m for seasons 19/20 & 20/21.

Their wage to turnover ratio is currently 94.6%.

Sound familiar?

Wolves have sold over £180m worth of players to remain compliant which has killed any chance of them having any European aspiration.

If any other club outside of that cabal finishes in the top spots, tough!, you can have a European tour in the lesser competitions, even if one of the super six has a mare of a season and is relegated.

That would save any club outside of the cabal from being overly ambitious and curtail their spending. If that doesn't fix the issue, keep the cabal happy and lead to better fiscal controls of those clubs outside of the cabal, I don't know what will.

Although I do think he may be misinformed in believing that the compensation will require lots of money in legal fees for the aggrieved clubs to continue with their claims.

An Arsenal's fan view of Everton's point deduction

The detailed information has given so much confidence that they all now have turned these analytical skills onto the Premier League, where holes are appearing, providing ready made fodder for the Media beast, which will be relentless in their pursuit of answers. This all will get more intense as time goes on.

This whole thing reeks worse than a Tommy Smith jockstrap and it’s fairly obvious these odious c**ts are trying to fuck us right over. For what end I’m not sure. But if clubs start legal proceedings so that some poxy solicitor can rake in even more cash the game is finished. Especially if it’s the same bunch on that panel, who obviously have an agenda. How it’s come to this, even with all the mismanagement is just astonishing. It’s so blatant. They’re like a bunch of drug addled psychopaths looking for their next victim and we’re it. Let’s fuck the lot of them and get angry at our treatment. Never forget.

Outlay on a stadium like that is about as far removed as you will get from the speculative, jam-tomorrow transfer spending which football's financial sustainability rules are designed to prevent.

IAN HERBERT: The goalposts moved in Everton's case...that's why punishment is so unfair

If it wasn’t so much more than a game it would be something to laugh off and I seriously hope there’s a happy ending here but then I’ve been living off my 80’s memories for decades now and it appears written.

Good luck everyone and hold on to the good memories.

Amongst all the righteous fury it’s understandably easy for this previously mentioned link to get lost.

Link

Personally I think it’s an excellent idea to raise money for coordinated supporter demonstrations of this anger. The PL would prefer this to play out in the background with their phony legal process. Let’s not let it.

ie we may get a RB on loan just because he plays for say Vasco or Genoa, when there may well be far better options for other clubs. We may be forcefully encouraged to take the lesser player with a view to improving him and his value which to our detriment may not work out.

I also tend to believe, with or without 777 Partners, that we will be scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for players from anywhere, that are as cheap as chips and probably not of the standard that we'd like to see representing our club, but that's where the financial mismanagement of the club has led us.

Is there any light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel which we find ourselves in?

They are as much a part of the club as the first team, and would have had as much 'sporting advantage'...?

Just a thought.

Because expenditure on women's, youth football etc is excluded from the P&S calculation.

My take on Player X is somewhat different. In Para 29: Everton had signed Player X in 2017. Player X had proved to be a star player for the club. In July 2021 Player X was arrested. The FA suspended Player X from all football activity.

Notwithstanding that this was the correct action of the regulatory body, they did so in the knowledge that it effectively 'wrote off' a salable asset and this should have been part of the calculations. The fact that Everton didn't pursue the player for damages is neither here nor there.

But the overview I get is that, if we hadn't decided to move to a new stadium or funded it a different way, we wouldn't be in this mess. The fact that the stadium will fundamentally change Everton's finances was almost brushed aside.

I'm willing to bet that the Premier League will rule that the Chelsea and Man City problems are 'different' than Everton's and they will receive a slap on the wrist.

For arguments sake let's say we swapped places with Leicester, that would have still left Burnley or Leeds in the Bottom 3, would have just been a case of Everton being in the Bottom 3, and the highest placed bottom three team switching places.

So surely two or more teams cannot possibly claim, just the team that finished 3rd bottom has a half-decent chance of a claim.