Alleged breaches of the Premier League's Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) brought Everton to within minutes of relegation. It made the Premier League a sworn enemy at Goodison Park. The PSR vendetta against Everton became the most devoured conspiracy theory amongst a fanbase that genuinely believes every decision in Liverpool’s favour is the result of a Faustian pact. (It is!) But whisper it quietly… PSR has been good for Everton.
During David Moyes’s first Goodison reign, two loaded terms encapsulated the also-ran era: shoestring budget and glass ceiling. Everton were good but not good enough, and worse still, fans only realised how good Everton actually were in retrospect, after they became terrible.
Enter Farhard Moshiri, whose reign of error gave the Toffees a new, unwanted identity. Wasteful, reckless, clueless, desperate. A laughing stock. The laughing stock. The go-to punchline when anybody needed to refer to a shit football club. But what stopped Moshiri in his tracks?
It wasn’t results. It wasn’t Bill Kenwright. It wasn’t even signing Wayne Rooney, Gylfi Sigurdsson, Davy Klaassen, and Nikola Vlasic in the same summer. It wasn’t the knowledge he was risking the club’s future. It was PSR.
The red terror of PSR’s arbitrary limitations was the line in the sand for the Blues. If not a point of no return, a point of several Championship seasons before return, you would have thought… if Everton were lucky. PSR had the power to tell the new emperor he was completely exposed and everybody could see it.
Ahead of the 2019-20 season, Everton burned £101M on Alex Iwobi, Moise Kean, Andre Gomes, Jean-Philippe Gbamin, and Fabian Delph. Before wages. A year later, they incinerated £64M on Ben Godfrey, Allan, and Abdoulaye Doucoure, and made imaginary room for James Rodriguez.
But by the summer of 2022, the end of Everton’s sowing era was apparent; the time to reap was upon us. Salomon Rondon, Andros Townsend, Asmir Begovic, Dele Alli, and Demarai Gray were acquired for £1.7M. Bargains, you may suggest; a random haul from an expired goods supermarket’s reduced section, you should conclude. The Toffees’ first PSR charge arrived in March 2023, but the message was clear at this point: Everton weren’t just tightening their belts, they were wrenching the tourniquet to cut off the circulation.
Let’s skip forward to the present day. This summer, Everton have signed Tyler Dibling, Thierno Barry, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Carlos Alcaraz, Adam Aznou, and Mark Travers on permanent transfers for a total sum of around £110M. Last year, they bought Iliman Ndiaye, Jake O’Brien, Tim Iroegbunam, and, irrelevantly, Begovic again, for £42M.
Excluding backup goalkeepers – because I simply do not care about them – that’s eight players signed for an average of £19M at an average age of 22. They’re smart signings. They’re Brighton and Bournemouth signings. They’re all players who improve the squad immediately and seem likely to increase in value. More planning, lower risk, better value. This is a sea change in policy.
And then of course, there is hefty expenditure on one of Jack Grealish. This is no doubt a considerable departure from the penny-pinching pragmatism that informed Everton’s focus on youth, but even a spreadsheet needs colour. We’re talking about a genuinely thrilling player who’s been tested at the highest level and emerged with a treble.
Grealish will cost Everton a galling amount… but he’ll be indifference insurance for the new owners as they navigate the Toffees’ first year in their new home. His two-assist Man of the Match debut against Brighton underlined this point immediately.
Even the frustrating aspects of Everton’s summer transfer policy have been encouraging. The Toffees had been desperate to strengthen the right side of their attack which had essentially become a haunted position in recent years. Francisco Conceição, Malick Fofana, and Tyler Dibling were identified as main targets; James McAtee, Omari Hutchison, and Abdul Fatawu as backups.
Eventually, Dibling signed for £40M including add-ons, a fee lower than a bid previously rejected by Southampton with a sell-on clause reportedly much lower than the 25% they had demanded. Everton held their nerve, took the flak, and made a very sensible investment, further hinting at a club finally getting to grips with itself and with the market, understanding where ambition and budget intersect, at last appreciating value and acknowledging cost.
Everton’s transformation from stupidity to efficiency took root in the decomposition of Moshiri’s vision, through Kevin Thelwell. It has grown in the optimistic bloom of the Friedkin era, but the seeds were planted by PSR.
Everton were forced to stop being shortsighted, irresponsible, and profligate, and to start pinching pennies, to sober up, to slap themselves around the face, and to learn how to be a proper football club. That won’t happen overnight, it may take a while – but, for the first time since Farhad Moshiri sank his teeth into the club, Everton are on the right track. PSR signalled the end of an error.
You can argue this is all in spite of PSR, that the Premier League dealt with Everton in an excessive and unfair way, and that would be reasonable – it was proven on appeal after all. You could highlight the indefinite can-kicking policy more affluent clubs enjoy and imagine how useful that would have been as Bournemouth’s Matias Vina lined up an Instant Relegation Volley in the dying seconds of the 2022-23 season.
By all means despair at a system which enables accountants to drastically impact on-field performance with selling-hotels-to-yourself loopholes. It’s flawed, it’s poorly-written law, and it will negatively impact Everton and similar level clubs in future without doubt.
But this is not a moratorium on PSR, it’s an assessment of its impact on Everton. And the before and after shots look digitally altered. The grey misery and shame of Goodison’s final days have been replaced by the gleam of a bright, new dawn and the renewal of hope that seemed extinct.
Of course the new stadium, new owners, and new old manager are big factors, but so too are the consequences of PSR. Everton arrive at this decisive moment in good health – Moyes has been given a competitive budget to rebuild a club that ought to be capable of testing the glass ceiling’s robustness. Like it or loathe it, PSR forcing Everton to confront reality has been vital in reaching this point.
Reader Comments (38)
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2 Posted 28/08/2025 at 21:29:44
3 Posted 28/08/2025 at 21:42:04
“The Premier League has to solve different problems than the financial fair play of Everton. For the fact that six teams wanted to go in the Super League, first of all they have to take care of this and then, maybe, they can have a look at Everton. But we are going to look at ourselves.
“If they looked at us, with the problem they had with the top six that wanted to join the Super League, that would be funny. Of course we will take care of our financial aspect but we can buy without selling players this summer for sure. We're all agreed on the plan we have to improve the squad and there is no doubt we are totally focused on this. We are totally agreed, from the manager, the club and the technical director, Marcel Brands.”
Essentially, the Moshiri era view was that "we can do what we want cause it is not as bad as what they did." But, the Premier League disagreed. So I don't believe we stumbled into non-compliance, or made accounting mishaps that prevented us from seeing our problem. The club simply decided to do what it wanted and assume they'd get away with it.
Obviously, things were compounded when Usmanov was sanctioned. Meaning no more £15M training ground sponsorship. No further development on the £10M first option for naming rights on the stadium -- laughable when the actual deal has netted us just £6M from our actual sponsors.
We couldn't just keep bailing ourselves out with ludicrous cash injections from Usmanov. But the penny must have already dropped some time after Carlo's statement in May, and perhaps that is the real reason he suddenly upped and left?
4 Posted 28/08/2025 at 21:44:02
As soon as he was sanctioned, the money tap shut, which nobody was expecting. That crippled Everton, who suddenly had to be solvent on their own.
5 Posted 28/08/2025 at 21:51:08
Think you're tough, Landon? We just supported Everton for the last 3 seasons & are still here.
6 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:00:47
7 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:01:52
PSR might've been a wake-up call, but many inside the shady business of football, including the blazers in charge, had for decades identified Everton as a basket-case when it came to credibility, and they therefore had no compunction in selecting us for a public trouncing.
8 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:02:02
After Putin invaded Ukraine, the oligarchs were black-balled by the British Government, meaning we got shafted financially as we returned Usmanov's significant sponsorship dosh. The Hill Dickinson Stadium may well have been the USM Stadium instead and we also returned other monies such as his sponsorship of Finch Farm.
I agree with MK, PSR is not the biggest factor behind the change of approach and Moshiri running out of money for Everton Football Club. Had Russia not invaded Ukraine I don't believe we would have new ownership.
Anyway, we are where we are. I have much more faith in TFG than Moshiri & Usmanov. If we were not constrained by PSR though, we could compete more easily with the sides who have the biggest budgets now due to being already on the financial gravy train of Champions League footy and the related windfalls that come directly and indirectly from that.
9 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:05:21
It's an article that anyone who wants to be serious could pick a lot of holes out of, Chris, but what's the point because it's quite funny!
10 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:15:40
Don't be put off. It has a Lyndon quality to it.
11 Posted 28/08/2025 at 22:22:38
If he'd've had another £250M to spunk, and lasted, we would have gone down.
12 Posted 28/08/2025 at 23:27:38
Usmanov and Moshiri wanted a club after bailing out of Arsenal. Everton, and in particular BMD, gave them an opportunity to expand along the waterfront for what aim we will never know.
The application of PSR against Everton in such a vindictive example of two-faced hypocrisy by the Premier League (The Super League fines, never paid, now a goodwill contribution of £3.5M each, not even a point deducted, the Man City charges etc), the damaged cause to reputation, fans, the game, the political manoeuvring…
Ah, the re-writing of history is such a wonderful exercise!
13 Posted 28/08/2025 at 23:27:46
You can present these things any way you want.
14 Posted 29/08/2025 at 00:28:07
PSR, at the same time, limited what buyers would consider the risk, also obscuring the value of the club as future penalties hung over us like the Sword of Damocles. So it also kept Moshiri in position to pick sketchy potential buyers whom he hoped would fail ownerships tests while supplying loans to the club.
Moshiri was waiting for the stadium completion and the property development was his exit plan. Only when interest rates blew up and Usmanov was sanctioned did he likely plan to leave for real.
Good shot, Matthew, and good take, Michael.
15 Posted 29/08/2025 at 00:41:20
16 Posted 29/08/2025 at 01:45:46
This is an excellent article. Well crafted and designed to create the back and forth of discussion. Ian Bennett # 10, you got there before me. Chris, I was wondering if you ghost-write for Lyndon — and that is high praise indeed.
17 Posted 29/08/2025 at 01:50:21
Plus the advantage that there will be no need to look into the buying and selling of hotels and absolutely no government involvement whatsoever.
Fleming and Le Carre would be proud of this; Russians, Americans, oil-rich Arabs, and Bill Kenwright would probably have made a musical out of it.
18 Posted 29/08/2025 at 06:22:53
I agree too, Chris, that this transfer splurge has a professional feel to it; I am delighted with the business done so far. I could not say the same at the time we spunked £29M on Bolasie and £45M on Gylfi.
Onwards and upwards, Chris.
19 Posted 29/08/2025 at 07:17:40
Newcastle Utd and Aston Villa would be 2 clubs that would be closer to them if they were allowed.
20 Posted 29/08/2025 at 07:34:41
Moshiri and his seedy companion saw Everton as getting a front seat on a docklands development and a great opportunity to launder the money that they looted, bringing us all into the ropey world of offshore and asset securities.
Everton bordered on administration as a result and the Premier League had to monitor their performance and effectively babysit the management of the club. Then they discovered that the figures they had been given had been manipulated and even Auditors had to wash their hands of them in public. Indeed a rare occurrence.
There was pressure from Liverpool who wanted Man City curtailed and lower table clubs that would sell their grandmother and slit her throat to get their hands on Premier League funds.
So Everton was a headless basketball case and PSR did effectively administer the club and prevent baseball cap potential owners from financially shafting us.
The long haul out of this morass has just begun. New professional owner, new culture, and a lot of work to be done. Finch Farm has been glaringly exposed providing an injury hit squad at the start of the season. Somehow getting it right by November doesn't fit anymore.
Moyes is in place because of his successful period during West Ham's change from Upton Park to the London Stadium.
Thelwell, misplaced praise, had to go because of his adaptation of Everton's little empires, a thing of the past. He did find some reasonable players.
The new regime will not pay Moyes's huge wages and allow him to pay out huge wages to keep him in his job, they will want development from within and a low average age to the squad.
But alas, please do not let us forget those days when ToffeeWeb and Paul the Esk operated in the realms of high finance poured over by the world media and we were all one step ahead of them in our analysis.
There were threads of over 300 posts on it. People who would never look at the financial pages had to stick with it. We should always demand to know about the finances. Not allow our silent new owners think of us as being the great unwashed regarding football finance, we do know a lot.
Now that the Premier League has money coming into it, their sole objective, we should demand more PSR information and analyse it on ToffeeWeb. Maybe even venture our opinions to be thrashed out on multi threads in ToffeeWeb's finest hour.
Never forget Oumar Niasse and the only retrospective banning charge for diving assimilation in the world — an Everton player!!!!!!
21 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:06:42
We operated in a completely idiotic way from 2016 to 2021.
PSR wouldn't have caused us any problems at all if we had competent management.
22 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:33:00
Without the Ukraine war, USM would be laundering billions through the club on a scale with Chelsea. I don't think many would be complaining.
It remains to be seen if the new owners are any better or worse than the previous.
Without USM and Moshiri, there is no BMD. No Ancelotti, No Rodriguez, No ambition. They laid the platform and have created the vehicle for the new owners to start making money out of the club.
The money spent by Moshiri was small change compared to the top clubs, it was just big for us.
The game has moved on. Multi-club models to launder players, buying up assets to sell back to parent companies is the latest way around PSR.
Our next big signing to get us to the next level might not even be a player. It could be an accountant to steer us clear of PSR.
23 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:43:20
That is what will allow us to spend and do so sustainably without putting the future of the club at risk.
24 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:47:56
PSR hasn't done us a single favour. It didn't kill us off, and it didn't made us stronger in the process.
25 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:55:20
Title: The Everton Revival
Subtitle: How a football club and a city went to the brink and came back to rule the game.
Author: Michael Lewis
Chapter 1: West End Farce
Chapter 2: The Russians are coming!
Chapter 3: Spend, spend, spend
Chapter 4: I had a dream
Chapter 5: Off with his head
Chapter 6: Putin's Toy Boy
Chapter 7: The Russians are going
Chapter 8: Headless Chickens
Chapter 9: Skin of our teeth
Chapter 10: If you build it, they will come
Chapter 11: On the Waterfront
Chapter 12: Big Boys Club
Chapter 13: Two-Tier Justice
Chapter 14: The American Dream
Chapter 15: The Phoenix Club
Chapter 16: Winner Takes All
Chapter 17: V for Victory
Chapter 18: And they all lived happily ever after.
26 Posted 29/08/2025 at 08:59:30
I really liked the, “End of an error” jab. It could easily have been the “End of The Terror” referencing the downfall of Robespierre (Kenwright) and his fellow Montagnard, Moshiri, during the French Revolution.
I'm just glad those two are slowly disappearing into the fog of time and we can now move on.
27 Posted 29/08/2025 at 10:03:39
It's much too early to make a full judgement on the Friedkins, but I'm thankful it feels like the grown-ups have finally arrived to run the club with some competence.
PSR has forced us to confront who we are, not just how we spend, and in a strange way, I feel it has probably taken us back to the pragmatism Moyes thrived on in his first reign.
He's now managing within constraints he understands – unlike some of the names who came before. He has a connection with the club and knows what we were like, has seen the bad times and the 'good' times and wants to make the club better. Maybe PSR has made Everton exactly the kind of club he was destined to manage again.
While the board and finances took a hammering, we as fans had to adapt too. Sticking with the club through deductions, chaos and ridicule has hardened us.
My Dad always called PSR, Pretty Silly Rules. I suppose that still sums it up.
28 Posted 29/08/2025 at 11:01:43
29 Posted 29/08/2025 at 11:45:20
I could write pages and pages explaining why and how but I'm still trying to get over it!
What those bastards did to us, said about us, and judged us, and how no-one from other clubs stood alongside us… Nurse!
30 Posted 29/08/2025 at 13:00:20
PSR has only been good for the clubs who were sitting pretty with squads worth many times more than the other individual teams.
If say Man City have a team valued at £1B, they could sell all their players and buy another set of players for £1B. If our team is worth a quarter of that, that's what we are stuck with.
Moshiri made mistakes, no denying that, but it was the experts he brought in that were very poor who were mostly to blame.
Anyway, we ended up with a magnificent new ground thanks in no small part to Moshiri and with new owners who rescued the situation he left.
31 Posted 29/08/2025 at 13:28:15
Everton's demise was triggered by several dreadful landmark events prior to that hateful person swindling his way into ownership:
1) Post Heysel
The club rolled over and allowed it to govern personal profitability over retention and investment in players. The aged cobwebbed shareholders slurping on the dividends paid and not returning a single penny. Abandoning ship and setting out the blueprint for how to take and not give.
Something that those following would repackage and serve up big time not long later. Whilst other big clubs of the era moved forward, keeping stars and squads, ours allowed the decimation of the best side seen post war — and without losing a wink's sleep.
There was clearly no intention to do anything other. Something their peers at the time put 100% into the opposite of. Its a paradox that we suffered the most post-Heysel in footballing terms. But not when you realise who the shareholders were and by their actions, where their intentions lay.
2. The Premier League
The formation of it and that we were involved in deciding structure, rules and distribution of the new money coming in and TV coverage was at odds with our standing at the time. Described as one of the Big 5 clubs, the look on Philip Carters face said it all. Like a rabbit in the headlights. He clearly was uncomfortable because Everton were going downhill fast and he knew it.
3. The Premier League (reprise)
We've been shit… Monumentally shit from its inception until now. Simply because of horrendous ownership and shareholders.
4. Peter Johnson
Hamperman. We were so grateful to be rid of this Shylock that we were blinded by the real traitor in our midst.
5. Bill Kenwright.
Those two words have the following effect upon me.
Anger
Disgust
Vomit
This lying heap of shite fooled the entire club fanbase for decades (barring a few until it was way past too late).
True showman. All bluster and no substance. His legacy is not fully known yet because the real truths are well buried… like him. I doubt we will ever know the full story. But 30 years of hate is that man's legacy.
6. Kenwright, Moshiri and Usmanov
I bet he thought he'd won the lottery. A puppet, a muppet and a fuckwit. I'll let you decide who is who.
Once Russia got sanctioned, the house of cards came tumbling down. Leaving the crook and its blunt tool to mastermind fooling the supporters that all was fine.
7. PSR
And its numerous reincarnations.
Brought in because of European and other world clubs going under at an alarming rate. Uefa and Fifa rules meant clubs in Europe had to follow. That lead to the threat of government intervention so, kicking and screaming, the corrupt Premier League finally set some rules, decided by the clubs.
FFP as was, wasn't —and neither is or was PSR. And it won't ever be.
However, because of the shear unbridled stupidity of Moshiri (the dead one being too ill to hide the wrong doings they'd done), we were an easy target. When an "accountant" worth hundreds of millions, all obtained legally, ahem, can't cook the books of a footy club that is not very good on the pitch or on the shillings columns, you have to wonder how the hell they were ever at Everton.
PSR is all arse.
Man City got a free stadium… and hid billions.
Chelsea got Russia's dodgy oil and gas money piped through their books.
Man Utd owe a third world debt, but it doesn't count.
Liverpool, sponsored by the world's cocaine dealers' accountants who keep getting caught at laundering swathes of millions and more, but that's okay because there's no cocaine in Liverpool or England. Deffo no money from such terrible terrible dealings (sic)!
This article was written for entertainment porpoises only.
COYB
32 Posted 29/08/2025 at 13:56:52
Interest on borrowings for the working capital of the club that specifically stated that they were not for the stadium were not exempted from PSR.
I'll go a step further than Chris and say that Moshiri took huge risks with this club's financial position and it was only Premier League regulations that stopped him.
I don't necessarily like the way the punishment was dealt with, nor the real motives for such a set of rules... but it stopped someone gambling with our very future. That's a good thing.
33 Posted 29/08/2025 at 15:08:52
I'll go a step further than Chris and say that Moshiri took huge risks with this club's financial position and it was only Premier League regulations that stopped him.
What does that mean?
Don't all owners take risks with their clubs?
Should the league have stopped him building a stadium or buying players? Kept us in our place?
He is a billionaire front man for a multi billionaire oligarch who stood guarantor on all loans didn't he?
Nobody was complaining when he had his cheque book out.
Sorry Ernie I can't be thankful to the Premier League for anything.
They are a bunch of greedy bastards who have nobody else's interests besides their own.
If you believe they are protecting clubs and growing the game that's great.
34 Posted 29/08/2025 at 21:57:30
There's a fair bit to wade through in your masterful rant… but this caught my eye:
The aged cobwebbed shareholders slurping on the dividends paid and not returning a single penny.
That struck me as a strange claim to make because I was sure Everton have not paid dividends to shareholders for a long, long time — certainly not in the late 1980s.
Heysel was 1985. Which happens to be the earliest of Annual Reports and Accounts I can access for Everton FC Co Ltd. No dividends paid. Same for the next 5 years. I stopped looking at that point.
There were only 2,500 shares issued back then, and I think the major shareholding was that of Sir John Moores or his family, until his death in 1993. Perhaps I'm missing something but these "aged cobwebbed shareholders slurping on the dividends paid" just doesn't seem to ring true.
35 Posted 29/08/2025 at 22:40:34
My masterful rant 🫡🤣
Reading through this article and thread I was whisked back in time and into a part of my mind which had been sealed long ago by specialist psychiatrists, who called it Warehouse X. Sorting through the spool reel memory banks, recalling and writing without researching. The diatribe was then submitted and a disclaimer added.
However in answer to your pertinent point, I submit this for your information :-
Lady Grantchester (Betty Suenson-Taylor) was the daughter of Sir John Moores, the founder of Littlewoods and Everton FC. She held a substantial stake in the club, a 40% share along with her sister, inherited from her father in 1994. She sold her stake in Everton FC in 1997 to Peter Johnson and later served as a Littlewoods director from 1977 to 1997.
I hope it alleviates your concerns.
COYB
36 Posted 30/08/2025 at 10:46:36
PSR doesn't help us now – but I doubt TFG would want to spend unsustainably anyway – since they do appear to be competent.
Give it 5 years of competent management off the pitch and it should equip us to become one of the big boys again – or at least be on the fringes of it.
37 Posted 30/08/2025 at 12:27:41
I hope it alleviates your concerns.
Not really. Selling shares is one thing — you said they were "slurping off dividends", which I questioned.
Let's have it straight: they weren't… were they?
"Slurping on dividends" would mean taking money out of the club. Selling shares does not directly impact the club's finances in that way at all.
38 Posted 30/08/2025 at 13:11:56
I will yield to the confusion I have caused. I meant dividends in a broader term than the one you have linked it to.
One doesn't just reap a dividend from shares profit.
I stand by the fact that those involved at the time with the ownership and poor running of the club did not do it for free and without reward.
Nor did they put anything back. Hence stagnation.
But if you disagree, then that is fine.
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1 Posted 28/08/2025 at 21:22:24
I could equally well argue that all Everton's problems with PSR came about through a combination of a huge slice of managerial incompetence from the regime then in power, and the huge ultimately unfunded cost of the new stadium — which was supposed to be exempt from PSR.
The 'benefit' we now see has come about because those incompetents have been ousted (or killed off) and the new owners have refinanced borrowing against the now completed stadium — nothing at all to do with PSR.
And going forward, the vastly improved management of the club by a highly professional American business venture is what has enabled Moyes to rebuild his threadbare squad — not PSR.
But let's not spoil a nice piece of prose with some boring fact-checking, eh?