Premier League: Culture of punishment continues for 'some' clubs in the league
Leicester City chairman Aiyawatt 'Top' Srivaddhanaprabha left) and manager Enzo Maresca during an open-top bus parade in Leicester to celebrate winning the Sky Bet Championship title. But they may face up to a 15-point deduction on their first day back in The Premier League. Picture: Joe Giddens/PA Wire
THE 2023-24 Premier League season was notable for the points deductions imposed on two teams, mid-season, for breaching the league’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), in other words breaking the spending rules of the league.
The PSR dictates that a club cannot have losses greater than £105m across the previous three seasons.
Well, next season will be even more notable by the news that two teams may have points deductions before they even start.
Everton were deducted eight points and Nottingham Forest penalized four points last season for missing their spending targets and so were put at a significant disadvantage in the battle to avoid relegation. To their credit, both sides avoided the drop, but both were disadvantaged against where the sides around them finished in the table, with each place-drop on the final table, costing about £1m. A significant punishment in itself for sides that are already struggling with their finances.
The sides facing a minus points total before they even kick a ball in the 2024-25 season are newly promoted Leicester City and the unfortunate Everton once again.
Outside the Premier League, former top-flight side Sheffield United are set to start life in the Championship minus two points for defaulting on payments to other clubs in the 2022-23 season.
Back in the Premier League, Leicester could be in for a hammering regarding their points deductions, that may be between six and 15 points slashed from their Premier League total before they even play one match.
The Foxes are charged with breaching the PSR over a three-year period ending in 2022-23, and only avoided the points punishment last term as they had already won promotion for the Premier League from the Championship by the time their infringement was realised.
Poor old Everton, having gone through two separate points deductions last season now face another hit to their tally with up to six points being slashed from their total before they even start.
One hope for The Toffees to avoid points deductions would be if Sean Dyche manages to sell some players to make up the financial deficit before June 30 — the date that marks the end of the financial year and the deadline of the aforementioned three-year period.
The Toffees already began the financial year £89.1m in the red which means they could only afford to lose an extra £16m before breaking the permitted loss of £105m over three seasons. And it’s believed that the club spent £15m in staff wages and stadium upkeep beyond any other expenses this last season.
To make matters worse, the apparent collapse of the £500m takeover by prospective new owners 777 Partners has left them fearing the worst, as the deal collapse means they owe up to £200m to them.
In the immediate term, if they are unable to generate funds then they could go into istration which in turn means receiving an automatic nine-point deduction.
Reports have it that Manchester United are interested in buying exciting centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite from Everton at a reported cost of £40m, which might just stave off any immediate point-deduction this term.
It’s ironic that the battle with a rule that contains ‘Sustainability’ in its title continuously threatens the sustainability of a club when it has to constantly be on the lookout to sell their best talent in order to sustain their existence.
Everton are in a continuous battle to dig themselves out of a hole that is fast filling with water. Their ambition to move to an astounding-looking new stadium on the Liverpool docks have raised huge demands on their finances, but coinciding with a dip in form on the pitch, all the while the post-covid and Brexit collapse of the English economy made doing business and finding finance all the more difficult. Then, as things were not hard enough, the Premier League decided to get strict on financial fair play rules, even though it seems to be more for optical reasons than any real desire to get their cats in a financial line.
The Premier League are expected to discuss dropping points deductions as a punishment in their AGM later this month, in favour of financial fines alone. While this does not doubly punish the clubs with the points deduction, it does nothing to help and probably intensifies clubs’ financial difficulties. The league as a whole should experiment with the International Monetary Fund model used in the bailout of nation states in financial degradation, rather than just punishing clubs for breaking rules who were just striving to keep up with bigger clubs in the division, that they have so often seen flout the rules at a far grander and greater scale.
While the relative minnows of the Premier League/Championship in Everton, Forest, Sheffield United, and Leicester have broken the rules and deserve sanction, it must be hard for them to be constantly battling to survive, not to mind contend, when so many other clubs in blue seem to continue along their merry way without reproach.
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