Everton Discussion

[RandoEFC+]

It's frustrating seeing national journalists like this failing to get basic facts right. Forest maybe but Everton's problem isn't "irresponsible spending". It's that we're trying to build a fucking stadium you stupid tit.

Wolves have a higher net spend than Everton over the period in question for crying out loud. If I can find this, and all the other stuff I posted about the other day, on Twitter then how hard can it be for a reputable Telegraph columnist to find out the same information?

[RandoEFC+]

1 hour ago, The Palace Fan said:

 

 

On the bright side, Genoa managed to avoid a penalty today because some late payments that were due actually got paid after all. 🫠

[Bluebird Hewitt]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

It's frustrating seeing national journalists like this failing to get basic facts right. Forest maybe but Everton's problem isn't "irresponsible spending". It's that we're trying to build a fucking stadium you stupid tit.

Wolves have a higher net spend than Everton over the period in question for crying out loud. If I can find this, and all the other stuff I posted about the other day, on Twitter then how hard can it be for a reputable Telegraph columnist to find out the same information?

Tbf, 'reputable' and either 'columnist' or 'journalist' don't really go together.

[LFCMike]

On the stadium thing, which I think a lot of this hangs on, if I'm not mistaken, the PL's case is that a loan Everton received was not for stadium costs. Everton are now insisting it was but at the time there's no evidence of that. The below does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could

 

[RandoEFC+]

38 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

On the stadium thing, which I think a lot of this hangs on, if I'm not mistaken, the PL's case is that a loan Everton received was not for stadium costs. Everton are now insisting it was but at the time there's no evidence of that. The below does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could

 

That post claims that Everton's PSR problems are because of their overspending on the squad but given that Everton have the 3rd lowest net spend in the league over this period of time, how does this claim even get off the ground?

I don't know how people have the energy to dig into all these numbers to be honest. Nobody can "prove" anything at this point because it's going to come down to the interpretation of the rules by the appeal panel.

Personally, I'm not going to pretend to understand the stadium loan and interest issue. I think the club are making valid points but my social feeds are obviously going to be skewed. The people who ran the club are twats and it's a case of "don't give the referee a decision to make" isn't it.

If the club is guilty and the first breach was indeed by £20m then fine. This stadium discourse is dominating the debate right now. It'll be something else in a couple of days when someone uncovers some other minor rule change or some loophole that another club has been allowed to exploit when we haven't, but I think the overriding issues I and most Everton fans are pointing out are:

1) 10 points is still excessive for a breach of £20m with all the mitigating factors that they couldn't have planned for (e.g. loss of sponsorship and stadium funding due to Usmanov sanctions) and have done their best to compensate for. Especially when it's been plucked out of thin air with no sanctions policy in place beforehand.

2) If we're getting done for 2019-2022 (with such a harsh penalty) then it just seems incredibly harsh and unfair for us to get done for 2020-2023. It's double jeopardy.

3) This emerging media narrative that fans aren't allowed to be angry at the Premier League because it's the club's own fault. The fans have been protesting the ownership for about 3 years and the media didn't exactly give us much coverage. They actually gave our board (Kenwright specifically) more positive coverage than negative while they were systematically crippling the football club. The fans kept going until Moshiri had no chance but to sack the old board and he's agreed to sell up so concentrating on him at this point is about as useful as protesting against Margaret Thatcher outside Downing Street. We're well within our rights to direct our ire at the Premier League. 

[LFCMike]

45 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

That post claims that Everton's PSR problems are because of their overspending on the squad but given that Everton have the 3rd lowest net spend in the league over this period of time, how does this claim even get off the ground?

I don't know how people have the energy to dig into all these numbers to be honest. Nobody can "prove" anything at this point because it's going to come down to the interpretation of the rules by the appeal panel.

Personally, I'm not going to pretend to understand the stadium loan and interest issue. I think the club are making valid points but my social feeds are obviously going to be skewed. The people who ran the club are twats and it's a case of "don't give the referee a decision to make" isn't it.

If the club is guilty and the first breach was indeed by £20m then fine. This stadium discourse is dominating the debate right now. It'll be something else in a couple of days when someone uncovers some other minor rule change or some loophole that another club has been allowed to exploit when we haven't, but I think the overriding issues I and most Everton fans are pointing out are:

1) 10 points is still excessive for a breach of £20m with all the mitigating factors that they couldn't have planned for (e.g. loss of sponsorship and stadium funding due to Usmanov sanctions) and have done their best to compensate for. Especially when it's been plucked out of thin air with no sanctions policy in place beforehand.

2) If we're getting done for 2019-2022 (with such a harsh penalty) then it just seems incredibly harsh and unfair for us to get done for 2020-2023. It's double jeopardy.

3) This emerging media narrative that fans aren't allowed to be angry at the Premier League because it's the club's own fault. The fans have been protesting the ownership for about 3 years and the media didn't exactly give us much coverage. They actually gave our board (Kenwright specifically) more positive coverage than negative while they were systematically crippling the football club. The fans kept going until Moshiri had no chance but to sack the old board and he's agreed to sell up so concentrating on him at this point is about as useful as protesting against Margaret Thatcher outside Downing Street. We're well within our rights to direct our ire at the Premier League. 

Presumably because the club were still spending money on players that took them over the threshold for the three year period. 

I don't disagree that the points deduction seems excessive but it does seem that Everton have falsified their statement to the Premier League about what that loan was for. I'm not sure how they win an appeal based on that, maybe they'll get a slight reduction at best.

[RandoEFC+]

4 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

Presumably because the club were still spending money on players that took them over the threshold for the three year period. 

I don't disagree that the points deduction seems excessive but it does seem that Everton have falsified their statement to the Premier League about what that loan was for. I'm not sure how they win an appeal based on that, maybe they'll get a slight reduction at best.

Yeah I don't know to be honest. I've read several accounts now insisting that they "prove" Everton are fine and several others that "prove" they're not and I've reached the point where I'm holding my hands up and admitting that I don't understand enough to agree or disagree with any of the evidence. Invested enough time and emotion into reading and listening up on this all week, now I'm going to just try to wait and see.

[LFCMike]

I don't think they're helping themselves

[RandoEFC+]

3 hours ago, LFCMike said:

I don't think they're helping themselves

In what sense?

[LFCMike]

33 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

In what sense?

'Can't build with our own cash flow'. Everton are borrowing money each month just to pay the bills as it stands. 

'Made up rules' that are voted through by the PL clubs of which Everton are one.

[Dr. Gonzo]

4 hours ago, LFCMike said:

I don't think they're helping themselves

I don't think they're helping Everton's case - but I also don't think the appeals will be giving what fans think any consideration, so I also don't think they're hurting Everton's case.

From an Evertonian fan perspective, directing the toxicity that had built up over recent seasons in the fanbase towards the league seems to have really helped Dyche build a siege mentality in his side. With that in mind, I don't think the fans are doing anything wrong by directing the justifiable anger they should have towards both their owners and the league into something that is directed less at the club and more at the league. I think mentally it has done something for the players and at the top level any sort of mental advantage you can get, imo, makes a pretty huge difference to how a season can go.

And I think the points deduction was very harsh tbh - it's harsher than Portsmouth's deduction for going into administration. And for as bad as things are financially at Everton, they're not quite as bad as what happened at Portsmouth. And despite all clubs agreeing to rule changes, I think it was entirely reasonable for Everton to think the ongoing investigation would continue using the same rules it was using when the investigation started - especially as they were working with the league to try to get into full compliance. In that sense, I can agree with the "made up rules" statement.

[LFCMike]

6 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I don't think they're helping Everton's case - but I also don't think the appeals will be giving what fans think any consideration, so I also don't think they're hurting Everton's case.

From an Evertonian fan perspective, directing the toxicity that had built up over recent seasons in the fanbase towards the league seems to have really helped Dyche build a siege mentality in his side. With that in mind, I don't think the fans are doing anything wrong by directing the justifiable anger they should have towards both their owners and the league into something that is directed less at the club and more at the league. I think mentally it has done something for the players and at the top level any sort of mental advantage you can get, imo, makes a pretty huge difference to how a season can go.

And I think the points deduction was very harsh tbh - it's harsher than Portsmouth's deduction for going into administration. And for as bad as things are financially at Everton, they're not quite as bad as what happened at Portsmouth. And despite all clubs agreeing to rule changes, I think it was entirely reasonable for Everton to think the ongoing investigation would continue using the same rules it was using when the investigation started - especially as they were working with the league to try to get into full compliance. In that sense, I can agree with the "made up rules" statement.

I just think they're making themselves look a bit silly. The more you read, the more it looks like they haven't got much of a case of being hard done to. I've said previously that the total of the deduction was a bit harsh but everything else it doesn't seem they have much of a leg to stand on. 

[Dr. Gonzo]

8 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

I just think they're making themselves look a bit silly.

Well yeah, but should they care about that?

I wouldn't 

[RandoEFC+]

48 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

'Can't build with our own cash flow'. Everton are borrowing money each month just to pay the bills as it stands. 

'Made up rules' that are voted through by the PL clubs of which Everton are one.

They're just a fan group protesting. I think it's helping a lot of fans feel as though they are being given a voice and helps people feel like more of a collective. Bleed a bit of the negativity out like this and focus on supporting the team on match day. You can agree or disagree with the substance of the messages but I don't think it really matters because the purpose of them isn't really to win the argument. That's the job of the legal team, not the fanbase.

Your fanbase would be the exact same if they were put in the same position, let's be honest.

9 minutes ago, LFCMike said:

The more you read, the more it looks like they haven't got much of a case of being hard done to

I think you need to acknowledge that there's a certain amount of confirmation bias going on here. I've read plenty of stuff for and against Everton's case from experts with and without a vested interest.

There's two separate issues here. One of them is whether Everton are guilty of the breach and I think there's a 90%+ consensus that they are. The other issue is whether the punishment of a 10 point deduction is justified and this is the real battleground. I can accept a range of opinions on this one. I'd venture as far as to say that I think most neutrals would say it was quite harsh penalty. Everton fans clearly want to believe they've been even more hard done to than that and people who really hate Everton like yourself are going to want to believe the opposite. That's normal.

Everton's fan groups aren't going to impact the appeal hearing realistically and I doubt they see it as a bad thing if some Liverpool fans think they're being silly. In fact, they probably like it. The irony is that Everton and Liverpool fans always think the other group are the biggest nobheads going yet I think you'd be hard pressed to find more fan bases in the country that act more similar, just there's very few of us willing to admit it.

[Dave]

 

 

[Dave]

 

[Rafa Beneathus]

Pretty reliable Auclair, isn’t he? As much as I despise the cunt.

Wonder who the interested party is. 777 would have been a disaster, just cannot see that ever happening. 

[RandoEFC+]

Four points to be given back to us on appeal. That's the minimum I think I could have taken on the chin.

Regardless of Everton's guilt, it's absolutely scandalous how this has been handled and has definitely affected our season. Recent games against Palace and Brighton where we've been cagey because we're 1 point either side of the relegation line and it's arguably contributed to us dropping points in those games. The league table has been effectively incorrect for 3 months.

Four points puts us back up to 15th ahead of Brentford on goal difference, 5 points clear of Luton in 18th and crucially a point ahead of Forest whose breach is supposed to be bigger than either of ours.

If our initial offence is 6 points, you could see Forest getting docked about 8 points, and while I hope that common sense prevails on our second breach and we don't get punished twice for the same three-year period, if we do get charged with points again it should be less than 6 points as this time around it's apparently "less serious" but I don't know the figures.

[RandoEFC+]

On 25/02/2024 at 10:50, The Palace Fan said:

 

This is potentially good news but as things stand, 777's exclusivity agreement is still in place.

The Premier League has handled this absolutely terribly as well though. It's been about 5 months now since the "fit and proper" test got underway with this lot. If they haven't provided evidence that they're fit and proper by now then they should have been rejected. The Premier League have left us in limbo with no choice but to be funded in the interim by 777's loans so now we're either going to have those cunts as owners or we're going to have no ownership and owe 777 their money back.

Being an Everton fan is an absolutely miserable experience at the moment. Money has absolutely ruined football and it's not talked about enough because until it affects your club you can just live in ignorant bliss and tell yourself that other clubs deserve to get in trouble when they've been run badly. The reality is that any football club with hundreds of staff and thousands of loyal supporters can just be ripped to shreds on the whim of a Middle-Eastern billionaire or an American hedge-fund consortium. Shite.

[Dr. Gonzo]

I’m probably going to think it’s funny if the second points deduction is 4 points to bring them back to 10.

[RandoEFC+]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I’m probably going to think it’s funny if the second points deduction is 4 points to bring them back to 10.

Wouldn't be so bad. That would leave us above Luton as it stands and well clear of Forest who are likely to get more than 6 taken off them at least.

Considering we finished 17th last season and survived on the last day, spent £3m in total over the last three transfer windows while selling/releasing half of our first team squad in that time (Begovic, Coady, Mina, Gordon, Davies, Gray, Iwobi), and we're the only club who will ever get charged twice in one season against a ruleset which is getting changed this summer to double the threshold for allowed losses to the point where we'd have been nowhere near any breach, and we don't have an owner, and there was talk of us even going into administration earlier this season, any outcome that results in Everton remaining a Premier League club into next season is an absolute fucking miracle.

[Dr. Gonzo]

5 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

Wouldn't be so bad. That would leave us above Luton as it stands and well clear of Forest who are likely to get more than 6 taken off them at least.

Considering we finished 17th last season and survived on the last day, spent £3m in total over the last three transfer windows while selling/releasing half of our first team squad in that time (Begovic, Coady, Mina, Gordon, Davies, Gray, Iwobi), and we're the only club who will ever get charged twice in one season against a ruleset which is getting changed this summer to double the threshold for allowed losses to the point where we'd have been nowhere near any breach, and we don't have an owner, and there was talk of us even going into administration earlier this season, any outcome that results in Everton remaining a Premier League club into next season is an absolute fucking miracle.

I think you’ll survive and in all honesty I think receiving 2 points deductions for the same time period doesn’t really make sense

[RandoEFC+]

8 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I think you’ll survive and in all honesty I think receiving 2 points deductions for the same time period doesn’t really make sense

Of course it doesn't but I don't trust the Premier League to act in good faith after all of this.

[Stan]

Anyone else think they'll just mess around with the points so that Everton survive?

[RandoEFC+]

2 minutes ago, Stan said:

Anyone else think they'll just mess around with the points so that Everton survive?

Why would you say that? If your interpretation of this whole mess is that the Premier League are out to protect Everton then that's an interesting interpretation to say the least.