I agree with every word of the Fan Advisory Board’s statement. Everton have been stitched up — and now it’s official, not just fans shouting into the void
I’ve read enough club statements to know the difference between one written for PR purposes and one that actually comes from the heart. This is the second kind. And I say that as someone who has spent so much time writing “disproportionate”; I’ve finally started spelling it correctly.
The FAB don’t pretend Chelsea and Everton did the same thing. They say plainly the cases aren’t comparable. Good — because they’re right, and it’s why the rest of the statement stings. Nobody’s arguing the offences are like-for-like.
The argument is that the outcomes don’t make sense when sat next to each other. Look at the numbers and tell me they do.
The numbers, side by side
Everton overspent £19.5m in one cycle. Ten points deducted, cut to six on appeal, but still the harshest sporting sanction in Premier League history.
A second breach — £16.6m — cost two more. Then, months later, a panel decided Everton owed Burnley £35m on top, based on the theory that a real-time deduction would have sent Everton down instead.
Three rulings, one breach cycle, still haemorrhaging money and points years on.
I’ve built evergreen trackers around this club’s misfortune. It’s basically a second job.
Chelsea: 74 breaches of FA agent rules, 2009 to 2022, £47m in payments nobody disclosed.
What did that cost them?
£10m fine. £750k on a separate academy charge. A suspended transfer ban that only bites if they do it again. No points.
The six-point deduction that was floated got binned on appeal. £47m hidden, and the bill comes to roughly what you’d spend on a decent squad player — less, some transfer windows, the way that club operates.
Mitigation isn’t the same as immunity
I understand the mitigation — new owners, self-reported, fully cooperative, cleaning up somebody else’s mess. Fine. Mitigation should soften a sanction. It shouldn’t wipe it out completely while a club with one overspend gets a record punishment and a compensation bill on the side.
Any process that produces the “worst sanction ever” at one end and “no sporting sanction at all” at the other isn’t measuring proportionality. It’s measuring something and then dressing it up as ‘proportionality’ afterwards. Cynics would call it rewriting history.
That’s the bit the FAB statement nails.
This was never really Chelsea vs Everton. It’s whether anyone at the Premier League or the FA can explain why two clubs landed at opposite ends of the scale when the offences don’t justify the gap.
Nobody’s managed to do that yet, and I’m not holding my breath.
What’s changed is who’s saying it. Not Evertonians on Twitter, not a banner at Hill Dickinson — the Evertonian body the Premier League itself helped set up for clubs to speak for supporters, using the words “integrity of the regulatory framework” in an official statement.
That’s a lot harder to ignore than yet another grumpy paragraph from me.
Everton have every right to keep asking why. I’m not going to stop either.
Fifteen-odd years of doing this job, and some things still stick in the craw.
