The Everton verdict opens a can of worms for the Premier League

By going in hard on the Toffees, the Premier League have ensured that they'll be expected to go in harder still on others.

That they were talking of a ‘maximum 12-point’ deduction a couple of weeks earlier was probably something of a warning in itself. There isn't usually talk of a twelve point deduction if it's going to end up being two or three. But in announcing that Everton are to be deducted ten points for their breaches of Financial Fair Play, the Premier League have backed themselves into a corner from which it may prove very difficult to escape.

Because as we all know, Everton aren't the only Premier League club under the spotlight over financial shenanigans at this point in time, and comparisons with what may or may not happen to those other clubs are going to be inevitable, regardless of the fact that matters referred to cannot really be considered identical. Everton, it has pointedly and repeatedly been said already, cooperated with the Premier League when the extent of their overspending became apparent. Manchester City, it should be remembered, are in part charged with not fully cooperating with the Premier League's investigation into their affairs.

First we should probably turn our attention to what's fair, and of course the answer to this question is completely subjective. Portsmouth were docked nine points when they entered administration while in the Premier League, the only club to have done so since its formation. Spurs were deducted twelve points in 1994, but successfully appealed it and had it reduced.

But supporters of Luton Town could equally point out that they were deducted 30 points by the Football League in 2008, a deduction that de facto kicked them out of the League altogether through relegation from League Two, and the offences committed there had come under a previous ownership to those who had to bear the brunt of the League's ire, whereas at Goodison Park the owner remains—for now—the same. Leeds were docked 15 points in 2007. Looking for historical consistency is likely a fool's errand.

I'm not saying that Everton's punishment is too great or too small, here; merely that if comparatives with the past can produce such different perceptions and outcomes, what hope do we have of judging this deduction against one that hasn't been awarded yet and quite conceivably might never come at all? What I do know is that Everton's breaches of FFP were egregious, and that there had long been a feeling of concern about the way in which they were managing themselves.

And it should be clarified that the club's eventual financial predicament could have been—and might yet turn out to be—far worse. Don't make me tap the sign with “Hemingway's quote about bankruptcy” on it. Everton have been catastrophically mismanaged under Farhad Moshiri, and the buck for the size of the book thrown at the club in the fullness of time rests squarely with him (and arguably ‘main sponsor’ Alisher Usmanov, who may or may not have exited stage left when sanctions were imposed on Russian oligarchs in 2022. In some respects, it might even be considered fortunate that they’ve sunk back towards the bottom during a season when those near the bottom have already become so far adrift of everybody else that they’re still absolutely in the game to stay up. Take that feeling of injustice and mould it into something constructive, and they could find themselves back clear of relegation again in weeks, though this isn’t guaranteed.

If this deduction was intended as somewhere between ‘tough love’ and ‘pour encourager les autres’, too much love can be smothering, and the reality of Everton's points deduction is that it drops them back into the relegation places after a couple of months during which they've looked as coherent as at at point in their recent years of managerial merry-go-round and malfunctioning units on the pitch. Relegation could be catastrophic for the club’s financial position, a sudden reduction in funding which the publication of previous years’ annual accounts have demonstrated time and time again they would struggle to deal with.

But those comparisons are going to be made, not only with Manchester City, but also with Chelsea, the opulence of whose spending over the last 16 months or so could never have hoped to be matched by the money they could bring in through the door. Rumours have also started to swirl in recent days over the Roman Abramovich years. Where all of that ends up is just about anybody's guess.

This is where that gap in perception now sits, smouldering with increasing with an ever-growing rage. The Premier League may well argue that the decision over Everton was taken entirely on its merits, but it might easily be countered that to do so is considerably easier said than done. Is it even possible to deal with such cases in splendid isolation? Already, it's being reported that Burnley, Leeds United and Leicester City are now planning to sue Everton for £300m. Now, it should be added that the source for this is the Daily Mail, and that therefore there is a possibility that this will come to nothing, but it's out there now, another little crack in the unity of the league. Another litttle bone of contention.

And who suffers the most as a result of this? Altogether now, IT’S THE FANS AGAIN. Everton supporters didn’t ask for their club to spend money this wildly and this badly. They didn’t want a seemingly random managerial choice to follow seemingly random managerial choices—now come on; they went all the way from Ancelotti to Allardici in just a couple of years—and the detritus of all these squad rebuilds being layered on top of each other in the manner of someone throwing the pieces from five jigsaw sets on the floor, mixing them all up, and then asking someone to complete all five of the sets again. Again, and louder for those at the back, it should not be too much to ask that football clubs be run financially sensibly and putting sustainability before everything else.

Perhaps the independent regulator for football will go some way toward fixing all this. But it remains doubtful that they will be able to fix the anger that is already quite clearly starting to build over this matter. This is the corner from which the Premier League must extricate themselves, but quite how they do that is just about anybody’s guess. It feels somewhat as though, whatever has happened in this case and whatever will happen regarding a couple of other very big name clubs in the future, a very big cat is being released from the bag. The problem is that no-one can quite make out how big it is yet, but the early signs do not look terribly encouraging.