Evertonians must prepare for a protracted battle in the public sphere. This article assembled by Mike Gow at The State of Football substack site provides eight potential arguments or grounds for the Appeal – and a clarion call to keep the heat on the Premier League.
Battle Plan: Our Line of Attack
Each of the eight Grounds for Appeal is laid out below. The order is deliberate and dictated by the amount of damage each would inflict on the Premier League’s Independent Commission (PLIC) Judgement.
Grounds No 1-4 challenge the very notion that any sanction must take “sporting advantage” into consideration.
Ground No 5 uses the Premier League’s own argument, that “sporting advantage” is impossible to quantify, against the PLIC judgement. This is a back-up argument in case 1-4 are all rejected.
Ground No 6 focuses on the logical fallacy in the accusation that Everton continued trading players and this was the primary cause in their breach of PSR.
Ground No 7 highlights the moral hazard on display in the PLIC’s sanction which punishes supporters and the team, not those responsible for the financial mismanagement of Everton FC.
Ground No 8 is the final appeal against the excessive severity of the sanction imposed – demonstrable when compared against historical cases of penalties imposed for financial problems, and with the penalty imposed in the precedent case (EFL vs SWFC) after appeal.
Our objective here is to start with potential strikes that will cause the most damage to the PLIC’s reasons for imposing such a harsh penalty.
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