When will it ever end?

(Photo by Warren Little/Getty Images)

June. The Premier League season is over. Everybody’s looking forward to the World Cup. There’s excitement in the air over the transfer window.

And then, time for Everton!

Or, more specifically, time for lawyers and accountants and the Premier League’s (soon-to-be defunct) Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).

On Wednesday, it was confirmed, via media reports and then a written decision by an Independent Commission, sneakily posted to the Premier League website’s initial article upon Everton’s 10-point deduction back in November 2023 (yep, that’s right, they updated a two-and-a-half-year old post), that Everton had been ordered to pay Burnley a sum of £26M, plus interest, taking the total to somewhere between £35m and £40m.

Everton, fairly so, are outraged, and have immediately appealed the decision.

Without getting too much into the weeds of it, Burnley have won a case that was originally opened up to them back in 2023, when Everton were found to have breached PSR by £19.5m, and were deducted 10 points by an Independent Commission made up of David Phillips KC, HH Alan Greenwood and Nick Igoe.

The same Commission, as per Premier League rules, heard this case, as Burnley went ahead in essentially suing Everton for damages.

It all relates to Everton’s breach of PSR in the 2021-22 season. Burnley have managed to successfully argue that they went down that campaign because of Everton’s breach.

It’s all a bit ludicrous, and it comes back to a baffling decision made by Mr Phillips back in May 2023.

At that point, applicant clubs — Burnley, Leeds United, Southampton, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City, two of which have since breached PSR — claimed they should be able to join the Premier League’s case against Everton.

That was rejected, as was the Premier League’s push to have the case heard prior to the end of the 2022-23 season, but Mr Phillips did decide that, should Everton be found to have been in breach, that may open the door for litigation down the line.

Only Burnley eventually went ahead with a claim.

Now, and I’m no lawyer, I simply cannot understand why Mr Phillips elected to open the door for litigation. I cannot understand why Burnley have a case to feel wronged when there wasn’t, and still isn’t, a mechanism to punish clubs for financial breaches in the same season.

Why do Burnley have the right to feel aggrieved? They based their argument on a calculation — a model — that found Everton would definitely have taken four fewer points had they not breached.

Does that model account for Everton being 2-0 down at home to Crystal Palace on the penultimate day of the season? Does that model account for Everton grinding to a victory over Chelsea? Does that model account for Burnley deciding to sack Sean Dyche in April 2022?

It’s ludicrous, and the same Commission that handed Everton a 10-point deduction, which was subsequently found to be severely flawed on appeal, has now deemed a £35-40m payment as suitable damages to award a club that has since three times been relegated not because of Everton’s breach, but because they are simply not a particularly well run club either. 

In fact, Everton have even expressed severe concerns that Burnley will not be able to afford to pay them back, should the Toffees fork out the damages but then win some or all of it back on appeal.

It is also bizarre that the case seems to rest on the Commission not finding enough strength in Everton’s argument that a breach cannot come into effect until the end of the financial year in which it took place.

Now, in my mind, that is a perfectly reasonable argument.

Everton had until the end of FY 2021-22 to try and correct their PSR breach. They sold Richarlison at the end of June 2022 in order to try and comply. They could have, had they known of the loopholes that Chelsea subsequently found, sold property or other assets, such as the women’s team, to themselves, too. 

But the fact is that one cannot be in breach of something if there is a deadline, until that deadline has passed.

If you spend on a credit card, then you are given until the bill date to pay it off. If you fail to pay it off by that date, then you are charged interest. Surely, that’s a relevant analogy here, too. 

By the Commission’s logic, every club that has just scraped the right side of PSR in recent years through a variety of crafty ways and player trades — Everton, Forest, Chelsea, Newcastle United, Aston Villa and surely some others — was, in fact, at some point in that financial year, in breach, and so therefore, they were always in breach.

Look, this is a bit of a rant against the unfairness and ridiculousness of it all. Of lawyers and accountants deciding outcomes for football clubs. 

But, it’s also a reminder of just how badly Everton were run, and why TFG and Angus Kinnear and Co. must all remain extremely prudent and ensure nothing like this happens again.

Evertonians should be angry. They should be angry at the pathetic Premier League executive board for not pushing back on Phillips’ original decision to allow litigation; they should be angry at the Commission’s poor logic, and most of all, they should be angry with Everton’s previous leadership.

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