Updated Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has described the decision by Sky Sports not to broadcast an interview with him regarding the historic points deduction meted out to Everton as “deeply troubling”.
The former Cabinet Minister and lifelong Evertonian has called for the 10-point penalty to be reversed and voiced those criticisms of the league in a recorded conversation with the broadcaster but Sky elected not to run the interview before Sunday’s televised match between the Blues and Manchester United.
Burnham has called for an explanation for the decision amid suspicion that Sky have deliberately sought to minimise the impact of criticism of the Premier League commission’s censure of Everton and the vociferous protests that have erupted from supporters in the aftermath.
He claims on X that other people have contacted him to say that their own interviews on the topic were not broadcast either.
Sky’s cameras ignored a plane, bearinga message of protest against the league paid for by an Everton supporters group, flying over the Etihad Stadium on Saturday before Manchester City’s game against Liverpool and refused to show the players entering the field of play at Goodison Park on Sunday as fans booed and held up placards branding the Premier League “corrupt”.
“I don’t know why it wasn’t broadcast and I’d very much like an explanation,” Burnham told Mail Sport in regard to his suppressed interview. “As a former Cabinet Minister, I don’t expect third parties to decide what I can and cannot say.
“There seems to be a wider picture here with views expressed by Evertonians at the game being silenced too,” he added. “I find all this very troubling. They’ve have denied us our points. It surely can’t be right to deny Evertonians our voice as well?”
According to Mail Sport sources, “Sky were … reminded of their ‘editorial responsibilities’ before Burnham’s interview” while the broadcaster blamed its omission on a “shift in editorial direction” following the death of Terry Venables.
They also insist that, despite rumours to the contarary before the match, the volume from the home crowd was not turned down for the broadcast of Sunday’s match.
Burnham spoke with reporters before the game where he echoed the arguments he had put forward in a letter to the Premier League last week, including that the penalty issued to Everton should be declared “null and void”.
“The question in this situation is, has there been a fair process?” he said. “After studying the case, I have concluded that there has not been a fair process, there has been a highly flawed process. I would go as far to say there has been an abuse of process.
“And that abuse of process concerns the guideline and framework that was put together in August and submitted to the independent commission. I have been a government minister and been very familiar with the world of regulations and regulatory practice.
“You cannot in an ongoing case create new policy in the middle of (it) and then introduce it towards the end of it. It is what people would call regulatory malpractice – it is simply not possible to do that. But that is what happened in this situation.
“I would say the process should be declared null and void because of the regulatory malpractice of introducing new rules in the middle of a process, when really no regulator ever should do that.”
The Premier League have pushed back on Burnham’s assertion that there was an “abuse of process”, with chair Alison Brittain writing to the Mayor to explain that all 20 top-flight clubs rejected a system of fixed penalties by vote in 2020 but that, in this case, the League had recommended a six-point deduction as a starting point and then a further point for every £5m by which Everton had exceeded the PSR threshold.
According to The Telegraph, she also Brittain also told Burnham that the commission eventually found the club’s “refusal to stop spending on players” as the deciding factor in them going over the permitted limits and that warranted the deduction.