PSR/FFP fun with calculators

You, me and everyone else.

Um, excuse me but I've spent 50 years on this planet pretending to know a lot more about a lot of things than I actually do, and you don't get to decide that it's now time for me to stop.

I keep seeing people thinking that Everton will get 4 points for the second charge, but my understanding of the current rules is that the baseline penalty is 6.

The rules as defined don't specify how many points should be deducted.

There's this bit in the Everton appeal decision:

"However, we consider that a six point deduction is the minimum but sufficient sanction required to achieve the aims of the PSR;" (para 229)

But that's just referring to this case, I think.

I was under the impression (possibly through appalling optimism) that we were keeping the league informed of our status and actions, whereas Everton were rather flouting the rules. This being Everton's second breach might also be a factor.
In the back of my mind there's a 6 point suspended deduction. I'm just a fool.

Ground 3 of Everton's case for appeal was : "The failure to give credit for cooperation as mitigation".
It was dismissed, party because:

(para 113)

Boy did I misunderstand something about Everton's culpability. False hope again.

Edit: it was this line: "recklessness that constitutes an aggravating factor"

I see the exact opposite. Everton attempted to comply with the rules by selling him in the period.

We deliberately ignored the rules and sold him after the period.

The was no reason to believe Everton would get more.
There was reason to believe we would. And we proved correct.

Taking out hindsight is that the case?

I don't know enough about their sale, but without hindsight it looks like they took the offer they had to be safe and we didn't, hoping to get more.

It's Richarlison. No-one thinks he's worth more than what he sold for.
But yeah, we took a heck of a gamble. Brentford played it smart.

Everton fans constantly say they were punished for building a new stadium. Is there any truth in this?

I've not read loads about it, but I think it's to do with loans they took out for the stadium build. They'd normally not be counted for PSR, but I think they actually ended up using them for player salaries and transfer fees. I've probably got that totally wrong mind.

I've read stuff like that too but no idea of exact facts.

One of the early cases of a club not paying its debts and gaining an advantage over others via administration had rather a lot to do with them buying a (shit) stadium. The argument that FFP shouldn’t prevent clubs from ‘investing’ in their facilities has merit.. but if the idea is to stop clubs running out of money then it’s good to remember that it doesn’t much matter what the money was spent on.

What exempting spending on facilities does do is advantage those with the deepest pockets and, thus, more likely to be able to dip into additional capital in order to bulk up the income-generating assets that subsequently should increase allowable FFP spend. Good for Man City, less so for us, useless for Luton.

It was, of course, always incredibly stupid that clubs could ignore the costs of buying a stadium whilst including the income from pretending to sell one. But at least that eventually got dealt with.

I hope Everton weren’t disadvantaged by genuine stadium expenditure, because the rules say you shouldn’t be. But the whole thing could be abused somewhat. And probably is abused. Let’s say a club is spending £50m on a new stand and £50m on players. They borrow £50m from Wonga at 30% APR, and get a £50m capital injection (or interest free loan) from the owner. They’re going to say that the Wonga loan, and thus the interest, is all stadium debt.. but that’s just presentation and that massive interest bill is still an expense of the club even if the actual capital spend on the stand is excluded. By the sounds of it (per Shady) maybe Everton tried to do this but it didn’t add up so they got dinged. If so, that’s fair enough.