- Burnley awarded £40m compensation over Everton’s 2021-22 PSR breach
- A sporting advantage ruling – despite Everton’s lowest net spend in the league
- The Friedkin Group handed a bill they had no part in running up
At some point, somebody has to ask the question out loud. How many times is this Everton – this ownership, this squad, these supporters – supposed to pay for what the last lot did?
The answer, apparently, is at least once more. Burnley have been awarded around £40m in compensation after successfully arguing that Everton’s PSR breach in 2021-22 cost them their place in the Premier League.
The ruling, handed down yesterday, is the first of its kind in English football. A club punished for a financial misdemeanour must now write a cheque to a rival for the sporting consequences of that misdemeanour.
The logic is this: Everton overspent. Everton should have been punished during that season. Had they been, they might have been relegated. Burnley wouldn’t. Therefore, Burnley’s relegation is Everton’s fault, and Everton must pay.
You can follow the logic, just about. What you can’t do is look at the full picture and feel anything other than that English football is making this up as it goes along.
The sporting advantage that wasn’t
Let’s start with the thing that will stick in the craw of every Evertonian who followed this saga from the beginning. Everton had the lowest net spend in the Premier League during the period in question. The lowest. Not mid-table. Not slightly below average. Bottom.
Whatever you think of the breach, the idea that Everton were living the high life and buying their way to safety is a joke. The money went on wages, on poorly constructed contracts, on a bloated squad assembled by a succession of managers who were shown the door before the invoices landed.
It was mismanagement. Chronic, exhausting, infuriating mismanagement. But it was not Chelsea circa 2022. It was not Manchester City 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.
The commission still found a sporting advantage existed. Everton disagree strongly and have appealed. But even setting that argument aside – even accepting the breach at face value – the punishment had already been administered.
Six points in February 2024. Two more points in April 2024. Eight points stripped from a club that was simultaneously trying not to get relegated. The price was paid. In public. In the most brutal way possible.
So who exactly is being punished now? Which Everton?
The ownership responsible for those years of financial chaos is gone. Farhad Moshiri sold up. The Friedkin Group came in, cleared the decks, resolved the outstanding PSR charges, and have spent the past 18 months trying to build something sustainable at a club that was left to them in a state of near-ruin.
They didn’t build this mess. They inherited it.
And yet here we are. TFG pick up a £40m bill. The transfer budget – the one earmarked for a striker, a right-back, a proper push at Europe – potentially takes the hit. It is Everton supporters, who endured an eight-point deduction across a single season and still somehow stayed up, who now watch a compensation bill land on a club they no longer recognise as the one that caused all this.
Burnley’s grievance is understandable… I guess. They went down. That hurt. The financial consequences of relegation are severe and well-documented. But the Premier League’s failure to process Everton’s charges in real time – the very thing that created this situation – is not something Everton caused.
The Premier League sat on this. The commission didn’t conclude until after Burnley had already been relegated. That is a governance failure, not an Everton failure.
Someone in authority needs to answer this: when does punishment become something else entirely?
Everton will appeal. They are right to.
