There is a scenario at the start of next season that would further threaten the integrity of English football.
Everton have been found to have breached the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) twice in less than 12 months, one breach for the 2021/22 period, the second for the 2022/23 period.
PSR, introduced in 2012 and voted through by Premier League members as a way of imposing financial control and ‘avoiding another Portsmouth’, has for more than a decade allowed for clubs to lose £105m over a three-year period. Clubs can deduct certain things from losses, such as investment in infrastructure, the women’s team, the academy, and community projects. In recent years the losses attributed to Covid were also able to be deducted.
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For a long time, there have been few issues. But football has grown, and the sums have become larger, but that £105m figure has remained the same.
Last year saw it come into sharp focus as Everton were found to have breached PSR by some £20m. The result was a 10-point deduction handed down in November, imposed immediately, by an independent commission. That was reduced to six points on appeal last month.
But January arrived and the Blues were charged again, this time for the 2022/23 period, and joined by Nottingham Forest on the Premier League’s naughty step.
Now Everton face another hearing in front of an independent commission, with the process to deal with the 2022/23 breaches expedited so that any sanctions imposed to be done so before the start of next season. The report that emerged from the appeal against the last points deduction clearly stated that it was the view of the commission that any breaches of PSR would be dealt with via points deductions. That puts the Blues at risk of further misery, although they will argue they have already been punished for two of those financial years already.
So about that scenario. The hope is, of course, that Everton will still be a Premier League club still come the start of next season, but if further points deductions are imposed, or they go down by the odd point having been hit with two deductions for two separate offences that occurred over two financial years, in the same season, then English football has a problem.
It’s important to state that all Premier League clubs signed up to the PSR rules, and in doing so they committed to abide by them. The Blues were among those to make that commitment. It is never the fault of fans for the mess that is created when rules are broken, but it does fall on the shoulders of ownership, in this case, the absentee ownership of Farhad Moshiri.
However, the rule changes that were introduced last year to impose sanctions for 2022/23 breaches this season, with one live PSR case from the previous year, prior to the points deduction, mean that there is plenty of cause for grievance.
But rules are rules, it could be argued, and there is always a price to pay for breaking them.
What does not sit right in this rather bleak scenario is that Leicester City - a club who last year were reported to have the temerity to consider legal action, along with clubs such as Burnley and Leeds United, against Everton - are reportedly in breach of the Premier League’s PSR rules for the last three financial years; three years when they were members of the Premier League.
They are no longer members of the Premier League, but they are looking a strong bet to return at the first time of asking, sitting top of the Championship table under Enzo Maresca’s management.
But they are members of the EFL, and the EFL and the Premier League do not have the same alignment over financial controls. The Premier League could impose a sanction next season on the Foxes, but they have no ability to do so this season, not unless there is agreement across the two competitions.
But the Foxes, under EFL rules, have not broken any. They have until the end of the current financial year to raise funds to aid their position given that the three-year period up to 2022/23 occurred when the club was members of the Premier League.
Even if there was a desire to impose sanctions across both sides, given the timing, the requirement for an independent commission to be established and then heard, as well as Leicester’s right to appeal against any decision, there is almost no way that the case would reach a conclusion before the start of next season.
So, the potential scenario remains that Everton could find themselves having been hit with two points deductions for two separate financial periods, and replaced with a club that also broke the rules in the same financial period but who have not had to face the music in the same way due to the way that English football is governed.
At its simplest point, it appears grossly unfair on the Blues, as well as Forest, who could find themselves in a similar situation in being replaced by a team who breached PSR in the same league, in the same season, but who had no punishment.
The Premier League’s desire to show a heavy hand has pursued the path of competitive sanctions through points deductions.
At the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in London last week, La Liga president Javier Tebas told the ECHO that he did not agree with the way the Premier League imposed PSR, stating that the what happened to Everton was ‘unfair’. He also stated that he did not believe that points deductions were right, a view shared by UEFA’s Andrea Traverso at the same event.
But the Blues have been hit once, and could yet be hit twice with deductions. The Premier League have painted itself into a corner, and Leicester’s situation could open up an entirely new load of problems, with plenty of clubs sure to be keen to explore the potential of legal action.
It is a situation that paints the world’s biggest, most lucrative, most prominent domestic league in the world in a very bad light.