Dr Boris Gobshite

There's ways to push the envelope though. Lying about stadium finance when the Premier League has already given you a massive win there is beyond stupid. Claiming a Covid exemption on a player you've never actively tried to sell is also pretty silly. The Sigurdsson one might have had legs if they'd opened a dialogue with the Premier League when it happened and sought relevant legal advice. Likewise the Youth Dev one could have legs but only if they'd got the rest of the League to agree to the same thing. Dumping those two in at the last minute with zero consultation does nothing to help your argument. My guess is that the total deduction will be between 15 and 20 points for both seasons. It could be a tight battle with Luton but I really don't see you going down even with a 20 point deduction. As for Forest, i've heard that their argument is going to be that they could have sold Johnson for £20m and stayed within PSR limits but chose to wait for a bigger fee. That suggests they are around £20m over budget, which is in a similar ballpark to Everton's 21/22 breach. You'd expect that they'd get a 10 point penalty as well if that is the case. I suspect though that there is some dodgy accounting in there between Forest and Olympiakos which might make the situation worse.

I got dragged into this thing called a 'career' where I spend all my time making other people rich.

This is the guy that was in charge of sponsorships at City at the time the 115 charges relate to. If City are found guilty he's 100% in the firing line, possibly on fraud charges.

To be fair I haven't seen any Everton fans that actually know what they're talking about on this subject, which is strange considering the verdict is in the public domain. You went over the threshold by just under £20m and tried to claim exclusions on the following four costs: 1. Interest on funding for the stadium - You initially cocked up your accounting for the stadium because you hadn't got planning permission. Per UK accounting rules you can't capitalise costs on an asset until it is certain they will produce revenue, which for stadiums means you have to get planning permission in place. Until planning permission is in place it's a cost on the P&L. The Premier League actually allowed you to retroactively fix this error which would have cost you about £50m. However, Everton then tried to claim an exclusion for interest related to the project, which is contra to the agreement where the Premier League allowed you to retroactively save £50m i.e the Premier League did you a massive favour and then you tried to pull a fast one on them. The interest was also charged on loans from Metro bank which clearly weren't for the stadium (you had interest free loans from Moshiri for the stadium) whilst Everton also incorrectly calculated the interest to make it a higher exclusion at £14.5m. It's also worth mentioning at this point that as part of the capitalisation agreement the Premier League and Everton agreed for their transfer activity to be monitored. Contrary to your claim, and the claim made by a lot of Everton fans, this did not constitute the Premier League checking Everton's finances and reviewing their budgets every time a transfer was made to ensure they were compliant with PSR. The Premier League simply monitored transfer activity to ensure Everton were acting reasonably i.e. selling Digne and then buying Mykolenko is a reasonable move. Everton were repeatedly warned by the Premier League that their budget was tight and that persisting with any player purchases was ill advised. It was for Everton to confirm to the Premier League they were within budget, particularly because Everton were the ones forecasting forward. As it turns out, Everton were assuming they would finish higher in the League and therefore overestimating their revenue. 2. Transfer levy - All clubs pay a transfer levy of 4% into a pot to cover player pensions. If there is ever an excess in this pot then it is reinvested by the Premier League into youth football. Everton tried to claim this as an exclusion on the basis that it was spending on youth football. There hasn't been a single instance of any club trying to claim these pension payments as youth development. 3. Player termination loss - Everton tried to claim that they had to sack Player X (clearly Sigurdsson) and could have sued him for £10m but chose not to due to player welfare issues. So they included an exclusion for £10m without evidence to support the idea they could actually have sued Sigurdsson for £10m and won. 4. Covid - Everton claimed that £43.9m should be excluded based on transfer fees they could have received in 2020 but didn't because of Covid. The vast majority of these fees are related to Player Y (couldn't work out who this is) who Everton still owned. The Premier League's retort here was that this isn't in line with the agreed Covid principles that every other club has followed and that Everton have never sought to actually sell Player Y. Aside from the above, Everton actually changed their stance from not guilty in the initial hearing to guilty in subsequent hearing, but not as guilty as the Premier League is making out. They dropped arguments 3 and 4 entirely but persisted with arguments 1 and 2, which would bring their losses down to £112.9m. The commission decided that the Transfer Levy was not a Youth Development cost and that Everton's argument on the interest was not credible given the commercial loans from Metro Bank have usage restrictions on them. They concluded that Everton had a PSR loss of £124.5m The commission also concluded that the 'failure to comply with the PSR regime was the result of Everton irresponsibly taking a chance that things would turn out positively' and that 10 points was an appropriate punishment. It should be noted that the Premier League suggested a framework that would have seen a base 6 point punishment with an extra point for each £5m over the threshold, which would have been a total of 9 points in Everton case. My guess is Everton will have their points total reduced on appeal but not by much. It'll be interesting to see what argument they put forward for the subsequent breach though given they already admitted to £112.9m breach. I also suspect Forest will end up with a big points deduction given how recklessly they were spending last year.

Thanks, it's entirely ASF's fault.

The thing is it's crystal clear what's on offer, it's the deal Theresa May negotiated with the EU. That stands regardless of what form of Brexit we choose between now and October. The EU have repeatedly stated that the deal is the deal and it's not going to change aside from a bit of window dressing here and there. For some reason everyone associated with Brexit and leaving seems to live in this fantasy land where their version of Brexit is a possibility. This even applies to a no-deal Brexit. Whilst we'll initially revert to WTO terms when we eventually get round to trying to negotiate a proper trade deal with the EU, our largest and closest trading partner, the terms of any trade deal are the deal that was agreed with Theresa May. That £39bn will be paid whether we leave through the back door or jump off the cliff because it's a small fraction of the £200bn+ a year the UK makes from EU exports.

It gives you more options though, Milner's work rate is out of this World and with Lallana you can shut down any opponent in the midfield. At the moment though, we don't even have that option because we have nothing else at LB. There was some talk of Chamberlain coming from Arsenal and I think he would be a decent midfield signing. If we're talking back up for Henderson though then I think the discussion has to start with whether or not we keep Can.

I don't think GK is a massive priority. LB should the top priority, sort that out and we move Milner back into the midfield. In fact the left flank in general could do with some work. We've usually got Milner and Coutinho there which is a pairing that really lacks pace, especially compared to Clyne and Mane on the other side.