Everton expect to learn whether the club faces a second battle over Premier League spending rules on Monday.
The Blues, along with each of their top-flight rivals, were required to submit accounts for the financial year that ended last summer by December 31, 2023 in order for the league to review the figures. The league’s handbook confirms any club deemed to have potentially breached its profit and sustainability rules will find out within 14 days.
Everton chiefs therefore face a nervous wait for feedback on a process shrouded in controversy and accusations over a lack of transparency. Reports ahead of Monday, including in The Athletic, suggest the club could be braced for further allegations. Any charge will be formally confirmed on the Premier League website.
The Blues were the first club to be punished for breaking the rules and hit with a landmark 10-point penalty as a result. Everton are now in the process of appealing that sanction. Any further prosecution could, if found guilty by an independent commission, lead to further punishment including another points deduction.
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The ECHO understands clubs can be prosecuted over consecutive years, meaning the Blues get no protection from having already been recently sanctioned. It is intended that any alleged breach will be dealt with during the course of this season, with any punishment – including a points deduction – being applied to the current campaign.
Key figures at Everton have pointed to the club’s long-term work in the transfer market as evidence of a new-found financial maturity in the final years under the rule of majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri. The reckless spending that characterised the ambition of his early years is a feature of the past with the Blues having concentrated on attracting transfer fees and reducing wages over recent years, seeking to balance the squad with more cost-effective signings.
But the scrutiny will extend far beyond transfer dealings and even whether the club’s position on that front will hold water with Premier League officials is in doubt – the organisation’s case against the club, heard in October as Everton admitted a £19.5m overspend, included the argument the club had continued to spend inappropriately after the period in question.
That period is now in question, with the latest scrutiny process covering the 12 months to last summer. That includes the summer of spending under previous manager Frank Lampard. Fees were spent on players including Amadou Onana, Dwight McNeil, Neal Maupay, James Garner and Idrissa Gueye. James Tarkowski was signed on a free and Conor Coady and Ruben Vinagre on loan.
Substantial work to help balance the books was also achieved, however. Anthony Gordon was sold to Newcastle United in a deal worth around £45m in the same period, which also saw significant departures from the wage bill, including of the likes of Allan, Cenk Tosun, Fabian Delph and Salomon Rondon. The loan agreement that eventually saw Moise Kean become a Juventus player also concluded.
That financial year will be assessed in conjunction with the year ending in June 2022 and the average of the 2019/20 and 20/21 years due to the impact of the pandemic. Everton could lose up to £105m in that period before serious intervention from the Premier League. That total is the figure after ‘add backs’ have been configured – losses for investment and development in some areas of the club are allowed to be deducted from the overall calculation. This makes it difficult to work out precisely where the Blues fall in relation to the rules from publicly available figures. The Premier League is expected to make public any charge it levels against a club through its website.
Everton remain intent on challenging the punishment it has received for the breach it was prosecuted over last year. The 10-point penalty was the largest handed out in top-flight history and, on Sunday, the campaign against it was boosted by another group of high-profile political figures adding their voices over concerns about the fairness and transparency of the process Everton had been subjected to.