Expert rates Everton’s chances of having DEDUCTION APPEAL succeed… 👀🤞
Everton are in dire need of some positivity after a week that has taken a lot out of the staff and fanbase.
Fortunately, international duty has kept the players at arm’s length for now, but upon their return there is expected to be a firestorm inside Goodison Park as they welcome Manchester United this Sunday.
Seeking to rise out of the relegation zone again with a win, leapfrogging a Luton Town side that they were previously eight points clear of, Sean Dyche will be gearing his team up with a siege mentality that can feed off the energy sure to be produced inside Goodison Park.
Similarly, off the pitch, the fight still goes on.
Speedily after Friday’s announcement of the points deduction, the Toffees released a club statement outlining their well-founded intention to appeal the ten-point penalty issued for their sole financial breach.
Now, speaking on The Rest Is Football podcast, journalist and expert Nick Harris has given his verdict on the likelihood they will succeed in that challenge.
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Speaking to Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker, he claimed: ‘They will appeal. They’ve said that they are shocked and disappointed and don’t really understand the verdict, so they’re definitely going to appeal. It’ll be in front of another panel, as you say, and the key issues for them will be these bits of expenditure that they want deducted.
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‘I mean, we could get really into the weeds of it, basically Everton wanted to discount some interest they paid on their stadium, they wanted to discount money that they paid in transfer levies, they wanted to discount money that they said they would have won if they’d sued a player that they sacked, can’t really go into that, I’m sure everyone knows about that, and they also wanted to say that if COVID hadn’t happened they would have made tens of millions of pounds in transfer fees.
‘This is something that no other club has claimed so these are the areas around the appeal. None of us could say, we don’t know whether they will be successful. I imagine, given the verdict and the strength of the verdict, that they’re not going to be wholly successful, I’d guess. But they might have the 10 points reduced and then we’ll see where we go from there.’
Why did Everton get a points deduction?
To put it simply, Everton were handed a ten-point deduction because they spent outside of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules.
They note that clubs are only allowed to post a maximum of £105m losses over a three-year rolling period, and it was deduced that this was a level surpassed by the Toffees.
However, a mere £19m overspend has understandably left fans and the club frustrated, especially given many have sought to list numerous examples of areas they might be able to write off.
Harris also outlines a few avenues they might seek to explore.
At the end of the day, the club were rightly punished for breaking the rules. The main grievance that remains is regarding the scale of the sanction, as such an aggressive and outlandish deduction made little sense when the commission concluded that no sporting advantage had even been gained.
