Breaking News! Urgent!Premier League pressured to come up with Everton answers as Government intervene
Culture, Media and Sport Committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage has written a letter to Premier League chief executive Richard Masters following his appearance in front of the committee earlier this month
The Premier League has been asked to publish the minutes of the board meeting where its “sanctions policy” was adopted after chief executive Richard Masters was quizzed by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMSC) earlier this month.
At the committee meeting, which took place 24 hours after Everton and Nottingham Forest were charged with an alleged breach of financial rules, Masters spoke about the league’s Profit and Sustainability Rules.
Everton have already received a 10-point deduction from an independent commission earlier over a previous charge related to the 2021/22 season, which the club are currently appealing. Following Masters’ appearance, CMSC chair Dame Caroline Dinenage has written a letter calling on the league to be more transparent with their rules.
Dinenage highlighted Masters’ comments to the committee about having an “open sanctioning regime”, claiming they contradict the Premier League Commission’s own report from November which says they adopted a structured “sanctions policy” at a board meeting on August 10 2023.
She wrote: “While both Everton and the Premier League were entitled to make submissions on the sanctions in this case as part of the Commission’s process, there have been concerns about the decision of the Premier League’s board to agree a structured policy for sanctions and recommended it to the Commission.
“The Commission declined to adopt the formula proposed by the Premier League, noting concern that the adoption of a structured formula could compromise the basis on which it was created: to approach the question of sanction in whatever way it considered to be appropriate to the individual case before it.
“Nevertheless the decision to propose what the Commission described as a policy, rather than simply a sanction, has created the perception [of] moving the goalposts, particularly in light of the Commission going on to adopt a similar penalty as that which would have been made under the Premier League’s proposed policy.”
As a result, Dinenage has called on the league to publish the minutes of the board meeting in question and to “clarify whether the Premier League will propose the same formula in other cases outside of Everton’s”.
She has also asked for assurances that Everton and Forest’s recent charges will “be resolved before the final round of Premier League fixtures” and that any future sanctions “will be transparent and applied fairly”.
The letter also asked for Masters to respond to Dinenage and the committee by February 8.
