RandoEFC

I saw something about this with Martin Samuel's piece in The Times being discussed by Richard Keys and Andy Gray. If the Premier League are going to charge Everton and Forest this season, potentially relegate them, and then change the rules this summer so that Chelsea and any others get away with their billion pound outlay, then I'm afraid that's scandalous. There was even talk that Man City's 115 charges would be heard in regards to the new rules which I struggle to believe but if they're allowed to make their case against more lenient rules because they "agreed" to their court date and breached the rules in so many ways that their case became too complicated to resolve before the rule change, then corrupt won't even cover it. None of us know that's how things will pan out so it's all ifs, buts and maybes for now. I don't even know whether the rules are actually changing or whether it's just one line from an article that's going mad on Twitter, so for now, I'll reserve judgement.

I don't want to be writing more essays on this but Everton's net transfer spend over the last 4 years (not chosen randomly like some fans like to do to suit their argument, but because that's the timeframe for which we've been sanctioned) is the 18th highest in the league, only more than Brighton and Luton. Unlike our reckless squad building of 6-7 years ago, the first team is actually full of young-ish players with good resale value (Branthwaite, Garner, Onana, arguably McNeil, arguably Mykolenko) and those that don't fall into that category were either brought in for next to nothing or on loan (Young, Danjuma, Tarkowski, Harrison, Calvert-Lewin) or have given us many years of service to repay their large fees (Pickford, Doucoure). The wage budget isn't quite as pretty. We're paying about £80m a year in wages which puts us near the middle of the league. You could argue that we should be paying more like £60m a year in wages for where our team is performing. (You could also argue that this squad has scored the 12th most points this season before deductions and that it's therefore not unreasonable to have the 10th highest wage budget but I'll be harsh on us to prove my point.) That puts us a bit above Wolves and Bournemouth and bit below Fulham and Palace. However, if you increase our net spend over the last 4 years by £80m to include the impact of an approximate £20m per season overspend on wages for four seasons, that takes us to the same sort of region as Crystal Palace and a bit ahead of the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham and Wolves, still nowhere near the top half of what any team has spent over the past four seasons. You should also account for the fact that Everton have successfully reduced their wage bill year on year since Kevin Thelwell became Director of Football and Moshiri stopped interfering. Why am I bothering with all of these numbers? Well firstly it's to debunk any talk that Everton have continued to spend recklessly. We've spent a similar amount to the rest of the teams in the bottom half over the past 4 years on our footballing operation, so what major difference is there between Everton and the likes of Wolves, Crystal Palace and Fulham? Well Everton are building a stadium of course and paying for it all themselves. The bottom line here, if Everton weren't building a new stadium in order to become more profitable in the long run, they wouldn't be anywhere near breaching the profit and sustainability rules. You couldn't really think of a better and more necessary way to spend money in order to be sustainable and profitable long-term. The problem with the three-year cycle for us is that it takes more than three years to build a stadium. We're doing all of the investing in that project now and seeing none of the benefits during the same time period. Surely, there has to be some mitigation here. If the actual aim of the financial rules is to encourage clubs to think long-term and think about sustainability then you have to allow them to invest in long-term projects exactly like this without holding it against them. The club couldn't have done more to cut back on their footballing operation over the past 4 years. Everton admitted a breach the first time around. If the Premier League had been sensible and said alright, you're currently investing in something that's going to pay you back down the line but you've still breached the rules and we can't let it go, we'll hit you with a transfer ban or even a modest points penalty of say 4 points, then I really don't think Everton or the fans would have kicked up that much of a fuss. 10 points was already a harsh, harsh penalty and now we're facing the potential prospect of being punished a second time for 2 of the same 3 years, and potentially being punished for two different time periods in the same season because our case has been fast-tracked. As for the size of the original penalty, and an unknown further penalty, nobody knows what number the Premier League will find this time when they reach into thin air to pluck one out (because make no mistake, that's literally what they did last time). I know hindsight is 20-20 but it beggars belief that when these rules were set up in 2013, there wasn't a clear sanctions policy set up to go with it. The Premier League have left themselves in a position where they're making it up as they go along and turned the league for the foreseeable future into a farce where relegation battles, European qualification and possibly even league titles could now end up decided in courtrooms. Everton have a 10 point deduction already subject to appeal, and could end up with another points penalty which would then likely be appealed as well. If Everton and Forest both get another points deduction then it affects all the clubs around the relegation zone. What if Luton and Burnley start playing for draws here and there because that's enough to get them on track for safety and then Everton and/or Forest get some of their points back on appeal? It's a circus. This whole system needs a massive rethink. The sanctions policy needs putting on the table and sorting out as soon as possible and they need to start thinking about live accounting for the implementation of these sanctions because this process of submitting the accounts once a year and then letting accountants and lawyers fight it out for months after is ridiculous. I think that's pretty much all I have to say on the matter. We'll see what happens this time around but I'm going to try my best to control myself in writing paragraphs and paragraphs more about this because I'm frankly totally bored of it. It also goes without saying that as much as the Premier League have totally botched the implementation of these rules and sanctions, our football club has been run extremely poorly under Moshiri which has put us in this position in the first place. He has been an absolute cancer on our club and so was Bill Kenwright for giving him the keys to the kingdom. Everton fans are under no illusions that the club is by no means innocent in this. However, the point remains that Everton would comfortably be compliant by now if they weren't spending so much money on building a new stadium for their long-term profitability. If the Premier League's answer to that is to dish out heavy-handed points penalties and very possibly relegate us, inflicting even more financial hardship on a club that has done nothing but cut back on their spending and sell their best players over the time period in question, then I don't see how they can claim to be advocating for financial stability at all. It also sends out a very firm message to the rest of the league that unless you're already rich enough to do so, you shouldn't bother trying to invest in anything like stadiums or training facilities or youth academies that aren't going to yield you immediate benefits in the next three years because as far as FFP is concerned, that's wasted money.

I'm sorry but if the penalty is 10 points for a breach of £20m then surely you should at least then not be done for the same time period again, and even more surely, you shouldn't be hit for the two breaches from two different time periods in the same season.

Yeah it's weird because I run results through my spreadsheet and it gives me back a "fair" handicap line and goal line and more than 90% or more of the time it's the same or within 0.25 of what bet365 have got and it makes me confident in my calculations. Then it tells me that the "fair line" for Almeria vs Girona is for Girona to win by 2 or 2.25 goals and the bookies have it as Girona to win by 0.75. So my algorithm expects Girona to win by 2 and there's a 50/50 chance either side of them doing better or worse. Naturally then I bet on the Girona -0.75 line on bet365 and it loses. It's like they know when a team is due an overperformance or an underperformance, because more often than not the bookies lines based on whatever they know turn out to he more accurate than my stats-based predictions. It's not just the bookies either though. It's the market knowledge too. If that opening line had been deemed good value by the expert bettors they'd have been all over it and it would have automatically corrected quite quickly.

Basically exactly what I've just posted . Yeah I've seen so many cases where I've thought the bookies have priced that strangely and I end up right about 45% of the time and wrong 55% which means they've nailed it basically.

It's difficult to know sometimes how professionals make money off gambling. The number of outcomes you see that just totally defy all prior evidence is really surprising when you get into it. Still, the market only had Girona as slightly over 50/50 to win today and the odds would have shifted massively in their favour if people were basing their predictions off past performances because people would have piling on Girona at that price but clearly none or not many of the high rollers were because the bet I took on Girona -0.75 was the same odds this morning as they were whenever I put it on, more than a week ago at least. People must have had good reason to believe Girona wouldn't blow Almeria away today.

Red card for Girona on 80 minutes at 0-0 but Almeria had been comfortably more likely anyway up to that point looking at the stats.

The point about fit and proper owners is that if, like me and most people on here, you don't agree with state owned clubs, regardless of whether they're from the Middle East dictatorships with questionable human rights records or a "clean" country, that's where you need to direct your ire. By the time you're talking about FFP and how much money teams should be allowed to spend, the identity of the owners is irrelevant. I don't agree on Everton by the way, which might surprise you. We made poor investments and as a result, we'd spent an amount of money on transfer fees, but even moreso on wages, where we should have at least competed for 6th-ish and we didn't achieve that. To then have to sell Richarlison and put up with a couple of windows of scratching around for free transfers, loans and other stop gaps was our reasonable just desserts. Where I have a problem on our part is that we got hit with a 10 point penalty anyway after spending 3-4 transfer windows balancing the books and spending no money, and there was no mitigation for the fact that we're also building a stadium by ourselves and got smacked by the unpredictable loss of £200m of funding that we lost because of the sanctions on Alisher Usmanov (not that I agree with us getting into bed with people with his background either, mind). My argument here is that clubs should be able to invest in themselves. If Everton had continued spending over the past two years instead of making sensible adjustments to our dealings, then that's when you hit us with a sanction. If Newcastle spend £500m on their squad and half of the players turn out to be duds, then they shouldn't be allowed to just try again a year later. I think it's fair actually if Newcastle have to wait before they can invest more in their squad but if they're in a position where they need to sell to be compliant then I think that's harsh as I've explained above. It's also not the end of the world though if they have to sell Isak or someone, because they'll still progress if they continue to perform well in the transfer market. For me, it's Man Utd and Chelsea that are the problems now. We'll see how things pan out for them but the glaring issue for me is that if Newcastle and other teams have to regulate their spending at this point in time then we better not see Chelsea and Man Utd being allowed to continue throwing 60-80m at players who flop and just being allowed to try again seemingly indefinitely. Like I say, I'm not saying we should go back to the lawlessness that created Chelsea and Man City. None of us want to see Leeds and Portsmouth happen again either. I just want the accountability to apply to everyone. Newcastle have spent their money well, if they need to take a break for a transfer window or two and get by on what they have then fine, no problem with me so long as the same rules apply to Chelsea and Man Utd.

There's a sensible middle ground though isn't there. It doesn't need to be one or the other. None of us like Newcastle. None of us like the way that they, Chelsea and Man City have improved their standing in the game. I'm not going to defend them anymore than I partially have above. My problem with FFP is that there are 14 clubs in the league who have to earn the right to spend money, and 3 more (Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool) who have a significant advantage over the rest but can't take the piss to the same extent that the last three clubs apparently can. All I want to see is a Premier League where it's actually possible to disrupt the established order by running your club well. Your club are a great example of one that's taken advantage of the actual meritocracy that exists in the rest of the English football pyramid. Multiple promotions and now established in the top flight. But why does it have to stop there? Brentford will never be able to establish themselves anywhere near Man Utd, for instance. I think a Brentford should be able to overtake a Man Utd within a time frame of say 5 years if Brentford continue to manage their affairs well and Man Utd continue to almost sabotage themselves, because it's a sport and it should be a meritocracy. Currently, Man Utd can continue to just spend and spend because of their brand and because of their financial advantages born out of them being well run a couple of decades ago. I'll also hold my hands up and say that if Everton didn't enjoy the same advantages (to an extent) over Luton, Brentford, Bournemouth, etc because of our long term position in the game, that the "big six" enjoy over the "other 14", then we probably wouldn't have avoided relegation over the past two seasons, and we couldn't have had any complaints because the club has been run like an absolute shambles, to prove I'm trying to be impartial here and not just attacking the "big six" because I'm bitter and jealous. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert but what I'd like to see is a set of financial rules where your permitted level of spending is based less on your overall income and wealth and more on the money you make from your footballing operation (player trading and prize money). That way, if Man Utd and Chelsea spend loads of money on poor players who decrease in value, they actually have to pay the price by not being able to spend even more improving their squad. Meanwhile, a team like Brighton who have made an unbelievable profit on player trading because of good scouting and coaching over several years, can be the ones who eventually start spending £60-80m on players who can allow them to compete for Champions League spots and eventually even titles if they keep doing well. And the current top teams get to stay where they are so long as they manage their affairs at least as well as the clubs below them. In an ideal world we'd just have a flat budget cap across the Premier League and then we'd really see who the best run clubs are and who "deserves" success.

I don't disagree with any of this really but FFP is acting as a budget cap where the Manchester clubs and Chelsea have a seemingly endless budget and three other clubs, Liverpool, Spurs and Arsenal, have a much higher budget than the rest of the league just because they're already more successful. It prevents clubs from growing organically to ever catch up. So I'll rescind the "big six" comment to an extent because I'm not including you with those three clubs but I do think the FFP rules make it even harder for anybody like Villa, Newcastle, Everton etc to go from a big mid table club to a sustained top 6/7 team than it already was when Spurs did it. Newcastle is a funny case because if your problem is the identity of their owners then you shouldn't be looking at FFP, you should be looking at the fit and proper owners test. The Saudis or state owned clubs in general aren't desirable. If you want that model blocking from Premier League football, then that's the test that these investors need to be blocked from passing. If you put the identity of their owners to one side and focus purely on Newcastle's footballing operation, and trust me I don't want to go out to bat for this lot, but you can't really fault it. They've done everything right. Recruited well, not wasted money, improved the players that they already had and qualified for the Champions League at the first attempt. If you look up their wage bill it's reportedly the 9th highest in the league. They already have one of the biggest stadiums in the country. It's not like they've done a Chelsea or a Man City and just thrown a bottomless pit of money at their squad to be able to compete. They've had access to funds and they've used them well, so yes, for me I'm surprised that they're at risk of the FFP chopping block. We all feel the same I think about Newcastle's ownership and we shouldn't forget about Man City's either. But for me, that's about the fit and proper owners test and I'd be all for it if the Premier League banned state ownership. If we're talking about the FFP rules though, they don't distinguish between the identity of club owners so you have to imagine that if Ant and Dec had bought Newcastle and done what they've done instead of the Saudis, would we be more sympathetic about them having to sell a key player or two? I think it's harsh. They've spent a fair amount of money but the players they've invested in have kept or increased their value and their wage bill is well under control. I hate the pricks but it's a sustainable model so far and a far cry from the outright financial doping that we saw from Man City back in the day. I can see why you'd be pissed off if you're a Spurs fan or an Arsenal fan but clubs need to be allowed to spend money to improve or the pecking order will literally never change. There has to be some avenue for clubs outside the established six to dream of getting up there and sadly, you'll never see a Brighton or a Brentford get that far despite being deemed as the best run clubs from the other 14. Leicester were on the fringes and even won the league but a couple of poor transfer windows set their slide in motion and now they're not even in the top flight. It was Southampton before them who were making a killing of their youth products and being able to pluck the likes of Mane and Van Dijk through good scouting before selling them for decent profit. You have to be perfect just to stay within touching distance. It's impossible to sustain that business model long enough to get in. The only way to become an elite club now is to attract investment. FFP forces you to spend the money well now at least and Newcastle have done that in a way that the original City and Chelsea never did. You have to allow clubs from outside the establishment to spend money to a reasonable extent when they get their hands on it. Otherwise you're saying that the current top six should just be the top six forever and then it just isn't a sport.

Oh yeah because the likes of Luton and Forest are going to come out and campaign for Everton to be given their 10 points back aren't they? The Palace chairman said on Talksport that our punishment seemed "heavy handed for what we've done". They're not going to back us but as you can see on literally the last few posts of this thread, fans of Palace, Newcastle and Villa are asking the same question as me. Surprise surprise, if you support Liverpool or Spurs then you're very sympathetic towards FFP because you're never going to be affected by it because your clubs have been allowed to invest the money needed to become sustainable enough to spend hundreds of millions improving your squads every year, and these rules make it harder to do that. He says, trying to turn the argument all about Everton. Pathetic.

Along comes a RandoEFC bet. ️

I have no love for Newcastle or their owners but the current rules meaning they can't spend their own money despite not really putting a foot wrong in the money they've spent so far and qualifying for the Champions League at the first realistic attempt, while the likes of Man Utd and Chelsea can piss away a billion each and still be permitted to throw 60m or 80m at their targets, it's ridiculous. There is no limit to how badly run six clubs can be and they can just try again in the next transfer window. For the rest, every transfer, contract and business decision has to be viewed through the lens of the financial rules and staying on the right side of the line. It's boring.

All corners for me this week. Stats: Charlton Match Corners: 13, 12, 13, 16, 12, 10, 12, 11, 12, 16 Peterborough Match Corners: 8, 9, 6, 14, 9, 16, 13, 18, 9, 12 Peterborough Corners For: 6, 4, 4, 9, 5, 12, 9, 16, 3, 11 Four of those five instances of Peterborough matches not hitting double figures were in their home games. The reverse league fixture also had 12 Corners earlier this season. I've just added the Peterborough 3+ leg to slightly boost the odds with this outcome looking an absolute certainty alone. Man Utd Match Corners (Home): 15, 14, 9, 13, 12, 19, 14, 16, 14, 9 Man Utd Corners For (Home): 8, 11, 8, 10, 7, 7, 11, 12, 10, 3 Spurs Match Corners (Away): 9, 8, 11, 15, 11, 13, 14, 18, 10, 13 Spurs Corners For (Away): 6, 2, 4, 4, 6, 2, 3, 8, 4, 6 This one looks very strong statistically. Just hope it doesn't end up as a super-cagey affair with the ball bogged down in midfield. Adding 4+ for United and 3+ for Spurs increases the odds from 1.61 to 1.75 and I don't worry about either of them hitting those lines if the match does have 11 or more corners. I've been making steady profit on corners and cards by processing the stats from past games. I've failed so far to pick the right ones for this thread despite trying to stick to safe odds of 2.0 ish, so thought I might as well go for some slightly higher odds this time.

I'm on Girona -0.25 and Girona -2 myself.

Falkirk (average 10.5 corners in their home games) and Queen of the South (average 11 corners in their away games) combining to produce 0 corners so far in 60 minutes so this is yet another loss for me by the looks of it .

The Inter side was a roller coaster. 1-0 up with 6 corners in the 67th minute looked like it would cruise in. Verona equalise and it's 1-1 and still sat on 6 corners heading into injury time. 93rd minute, Inter finally get me to 7 corners and score from it. Should be in the bag and even moreso when Verona go down to 10 men in the 95th minute. Verona then got a penalty and missed it in the 10th minute of injury time. Got there in the end. Come on Falkirk!

Everton had to walk away from a £220m sponsorship deal for the new stadium because of Usmanov's links to Putin and then ended up getting docked 10 points when we were £20m over the limit of overspend and the lost sponsorship deal wasn't accepted as mitigation. I wonder why our fans think there are two different sets of rules for two different sets of clubs...

I genuinely don't know what your point is. It wouldn't bother you if I started making a bunch of home movies that were all terrible because it doesn't affect your life in any way. Nor does it affect your life if Disney are making loads of bad movies. There's hundreds of thousands of them out there so why can't everyone just watch the content they like? Criticise Disney by all means but there's a million ways that films can be bad (in some people's opinion) and if it's bad lighting or bad writing or bad casting decisions then people comment on it and then move on with their lives. But when it's because the skin colour or other physical characteristics of a character or cast member are not what everyone is used to, this massive fuss gets kicked up and we're having debates about the entire direction of movie companies and their politics.

Are you a shareholder? If not then I don't see what impact it has on your life to be moaning about films they're making when you can just choose not to watch the ones you don't like.

If you don't like those films then don't watch them. That's my opinion. There are plenty of good films and bad films with white male leads. There are also plenty of good and bad films with female/minority/LGBT leads. I'll concede that Disney/Marvel have been very ham-fisted on some occasions where it feels forced to draw attention to female empowerment or gay rights but what it always comes back to is that it appeals someone and if it doesn't appeal to you then you don't have to watch it. Generally, people who use the word "woke" tend to be silly tits in my experience who aren't able to string three sentences together to explain what their problem is in their own words.

No cup games for me.

The Premier League is going to make an even bigger mockery of itself at this rate. Going to end up with multiple bottom half and mid table teams with points penalties that are under appeal while City and probably Chelsea keep their cases tied up in courts for years.

This isn't for the game but I've just noticed that Forest are priced at 8.00 to beat Arsenal at home later this month and while I'm not saying it'll definitely happen, I think they're certainly over-priced. Draw No Bet is at 5.50. I've put a small bet on the Forest win. Thought others might be interested at that price .

Still a winner on the first leg isn't it?