Sorry Everton, but ‘corruption’ allegations will not be taken seriously

There were about 30 Everton fans gathered late on Friday afternoon outside the west London office of the Premier League, a protest so well-mannered that the police officers attending just chatted among themselves.

It was a short walk from the Little Venice office of the late Bill Kenwright who himself knew as well as any football fan that one cannot shift the loyalty of a lifetime. Players and managers come and go, but a supporter’s devotion is for life – or a life sentence, depending on your perspective. Many of these Everton fans had come on their way home from work, and only one had brought a banner of any kind.

That was a facsimile of the current social media protests that depict the Premier League logo and, in matching font, the verdict “Corrupt” on the fans’ banner. The same message was flown by Everton fans over the Etihad on Saturday and it is, by any measure, a big allegation. It was also indicative of the febrile mood that has followed Everton’s 10-point deduction last week. Not just fans but pundits, broadcasters and MPs have attacked a legal process that took place over years. One that was ruled over by an independent commission led by a KC, David Phillips, and delivered a verdict across 40 pages of judgment.

Gary Neville called the Premier League a “defunct organisation” in respect of what he saw as the self-interest of the 20 clubs. Neville argued that the top flight had only handed a £22 million fine collectively to the six Super League rebels in 2021 which has become Exhibit A in the case against the Premier League.

The reality was that nothing in the Premier League rules as they were in April 2021 covered the issue which, after all, involved the six leaving Uefa competitions and not the Premier League. The league’s board had to decide on a bespoke punishment. Soon after the Premier League rewrote its laws. The current Premier League penalty for joining a European breakaway league is an immediate 30-point deduction.

As for the endless comparisons with the Manchester City case – those 115 charges are simply a much more difficult fight for the Premier League. Everton did eventually this year admit they were in breach of profit and sustainability rules (PSR). City continue to deny all wrongdoing.

Corrupt? What would that look like in reality for the Premier League? Who would it require to be in on the sting? Certainly, all the executives in that office where the protests took place. Also, Alison Brittain, former chief executive of Whitbread, a public company worth around £6 billion, and now Premier League chair. Throw in the rest of the league board including the three independent directors. Add to that the majority of execs at the 19 other clubs given how much they fixate on internal Premier League business.

The rules have to mean something

After that one would need to nobble the three-strong commission that independently heard the case, starting with Mr Phillips KC. It would require around 100 people – lawyers, execs, club owners and directors – all of them risking career and reputation ruin, and potentially criminal charges. All so Everton might possibly be relegated.

Just to recap: Everton admitted their PSR breach. The club lost £304 million over the monitoring period in question for which the rules permit only £105 million in losses. With Premier League-approved PSR add-backs that was more than halved to £120.8 million.

The £39.3 million in stadium investment that had to be booked as cost pre-planning was waived. The club emphatically failed to argue an inter-company loan arrangement justified £13.6 million in interest payments that, Everton said, were incurred for stadium finance costs being excluded from the PSR calculation. Everton even tried to discount a transfer levy every club includes in its PSR. In the end, the problem was not the failure to shave off enough costs– it was the inability to stop spending.

From parliament, 22 MPs, chiefly Labour, but also DUP and SNP, signed a petition that said, among other things, the points deduction was “lacking any legal or equitable foundation or justification for the level of sanction”. One wonders what the aforementioned Mr Phillips KC thought of that. If one hoped for a degree of restraint from these politicians in a complex legal case, then it was sadly lacking. They saw a bandwagon and jumped aboard.

At some point, the rules have to mean something – and one can argue that the Premier League cut Everton as much slack as possible to wipe £180 million of losses from its PSR calculation. After five years of wild spending with Farhad Moshiri, the club could just not get there. Everton fans once felt so strongly about the Moshiri regime that the board was unable to attend Goodison Park. It cannot be that much of a surprise that the chaos fans objected to then has led to a serious sanction.

It is to the club’s credit that the new stadium is still being built and the accompanying estimated £1.3 billion boost to the local economy may have some traction in the appeal. But clubs like Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford have built new stadiums recently and not breached PSR. A stadium build cost does not count towards PSR losses but also it does not exempt a club from a breach when spending elsewhere is out of control.

A government regulator, under the current terms, would make little difference to Everton. Moshiri would still have been approved as the club’s principal owner in 2018. PSR will continue to be applied by the Premier League – although, it is hoped, the proposed updated version on squad costs which is less forgiving in the short-term and attacks potential problems earlier.

In the meantime, one can only hope that the complicated, unpopular, vital, job of regulation might one day register. The Football League hand out point deductions regularly for financial breaches. One might say it is a strength of the Premier League that it happens so rarely, and it would surely help if more chose to read the Everton judgement before rushing to their own.

All things considered, those Everton fans at the Premier League office on Friday made their point in a civilised fashion. Even so, when one alleges corruption, and MPs openly question legality, there is always the possibility of unforeseen consequences. Not everyone has to agree on the outcome. But all clubs signed up to the process.