Financial Fairplay Investigation - 2025 Nobody in Breach

[chang]

Super silk at the game today,

[sam of the south]

Super silk at the game today,

Our best player

[Shogun]

Any whispers about when this might be announced? The bottlers have waited for an international break on recent big announcements.

The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed the penalty is a points deduction at all. I've mentioned previously about how the people who have actually put us in this position have all got away with no bans from football or anything like that whilst those left behind are being punished.

Understanding that we're being punished with a points deduction to balance out the 'sporting advantage' we gained from being able to spend £19.5m more on players, why isn't this actually being punished by a transfer window(s) ban?

If we gained advantage by being able to spend £25m on Doucoure (God knows we actually wasted that extra £19.5m on dross), does it not make more sense to give us a disadvantage by blocking us from buying players altogether for a window or two? It's what happened to Chelsea when they were tapping up youth players. Surely there's no tangible way to say that the value of our sporting advantage was an extra 10 points?

[Paddockoldie]

Any whispers about when this might be announced? The bottlers have waited for an international break on recent big announcements.

The more I think about it, the more I'm annoyed the penalty is a points deduction at all. I've mentioned previously about how the people who have actually put us in this position have all got away with no bans from football or anything like that whilst those left behind are being punished.

Understanding that we're being punished with a points deduction to balance out the 'sporting advantage' we gained from being able to spend £19.5m more on players, why isn't this actually being punished by a transfer window(s) ban?

If we gained advantage by being able to spend £25m on Doucoure (God knows we actually wasted that extra £19.5m on dross), does it not make more sense to give us a disadvantage by blocking us from buying players altogether for a window or two? It's what happened to Chelsea when they were tapping up youth players. Surely there's no tangible way to say that the value of our sporting advantage was an extra 10 points?

I'm sure Andy Burnham pointed out the abuse of process due to the point deduction being brought in mid way because it was a fine at the start... either way, I think we're the fall guys to the premier league. Hopefully our legal guy will shred them, but you never know with these corrupted cunts

[777Kidnappings]

Feels a really weird process. All happens behind closed doors. No clue how it's gone. Then sometime in the future they'll be a random announcement about our punishment and we'll have no clue if it actually corrolates with how the trivubial actually went

[Bluedylan1]

I guess it would take a while, given that the appeal hearing was over 3 days, so presumably quite a bit of evidence and testimony was put forward and it'll take time to wade through it all. Also people have said that we are challenging the verdict on different grounds that we presented in our initial case, and it's being heard by a different commission than the first one.

[Bob Sacamano]

Does the independent commish have the power to reduce the deduction or do they “recommend” a deduction to the PL and then the PL decides?

[Cozzie]

Does the independent commish have the power to reduce the deduction or do they “recommend” a deduction to the PL and then the PL decides?

The commission decides.

[Trowel]

[April]

Something I don’t understand, and I hope one of you clever lot can explain it to me, is why are we (potentially) looking at being docked points twice in the same season? I understand that it’s because we broke FFP rules within a “3 year accounting period”, but surely that covers separate seasons within that period, and as such shouldn’t the punishment also be spread across different seasons, rather than just happen to fall in the season when the PL decide to hold its cases?
It doesn’t sit right with me at all, it smacks of them making it up as they go along, and of them looking for a fall guy as a test case before they move onto City, Chelsea, whoever, the ones who have actually overspent.

[777Kidnappings]

Something I don’t understand, and I hope one of you clever lot can explain it to me, is why are we (potentially) looking at being docked points twice in the same season? I understand that it’s because we broke FFP rules within a “3 year accounting period”, but surely that covers separate seasons within that period, and as such shouldn’t the punishment also be spread across different seasons, rather than just happen to fall in the season when the PL decide to hold its cases?
It doesn’t sit right with me at all, it smacks of them making it up as they go along, and of them looking for a fall guy as a test case before they move onto City, Chelsea, whoever, the ones who have actually overspent.

It's because we breached in the period 1, 2 and 3 and the period 2, 3 and 4. So we've breached in 2 3 year rolling periods

The 2 in a season is because it used to take longer to process but now they've passed rules to fast track breaches in the same season

They are definitely making it up as they go along though. I don't really have an issue with their being 2 charges. I have a problem with having no clue what the punishments will be. It's an absolute mess.

[April]

Yeah I get that, but it doesn’t seem fair to implement two deductions in one season (let’s call it year 5, to continue your system). What would be logical, or “fairer”, would be to deduct points for breach 123 in season 5, and to deduct points for breach 234 in season 6, so that the punishment is always the same distance from the crime, in this case 2 seasons later.
Surely to punish a club twice in one season because they’re incompetent at admin is totally unacceptable, and in itself the very definition of unsporting?

[bigmanbob]

This summarises everything well: https://theathletic.com/5254302/2024/02 ... l-psr-ffp/

[Juanito]

This summarises everything well: https://theathletic.com/5254302/2024/02 ... l-psr-ffp/

Can anyone copy and paste?

[Cods]

There are some criticisms of the article, not in Everton's favour, that appear reasonably argued (by someone that appears to maybe know a bit more of the detail than the average fan)

There are suggestions (unsurprisingly) we've been misled as a fan base by the club...

Extract:

The arguments Everton have to win
As part of a streamlined process, Everton were expected to focus on several key arguments:

The “disproportionate” nature of the initial sanction, being the largest of its kind in Premier League history and greater than the previous penalties imposed upon clubs entering administration (nine points)
The lack of clear reasoning as to how the commission reached such a number and how it mirrored the Premier League’s suggested punishment
The lack of weight given to their points of mitigation, including their £760million ($954m) new stadium project, the impact of the war in Ukraine and their positive recent trend on football spend
“Everton admitted breach of PSR at the previous five-day hearing, though the extent of that breach remains in dispute,” Cuthbert says, with the club and the league around £10million apart in their respective calculations (the commission sided with the league at the first hearing).

“It’s understood that they have, on appeal, taken issue with the harshness of the 10-point deduction imposed and the commission’s decision to dismiss several mitigating factors. Those mitigating factors include the loss of commercial deals connected to the now-sanctioned Alisher Usmanov and also the argument that interest payments on money borrowed to build the new stadium were permissible ‘add-backs’ for the 2020-21 financial year.

“Over the full accounting period in question, Everton accrued around £27m in interest costs.

“Their position is that a 10-point deduction is not a fair or reasonable reflection of the evidence submitted. Naturally, the merits of that argument turn on the evidence and those outside the dispute don’t have access to that evidence.”