Ten F*cking Points
F*ck it all: the ten points, the super league, the hypocrisy, and claims of "whataboutery"
Ten points!?
TEN F*CKING POINTS!?!?!?
Why?
I know, I know, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime, and I’m not for a second saying we didn’t violate the profitability and sustainability rules. But ten points!? How on earth did they get to that number? No, seriously, how did they get to that?
The truth is, no one knows.
There were two proposed formulas, to start at 12 points and work from there, to begin with six points for the breach, and then an additional point for every £5 million exceeded (aka a ten point deduction). The commission turned their noses up at both of these, and then - bizarrely - came up with ten points. No one knows how they got to that number.
Ten points is a lot…
The punishment was instant, we’ve tumbled down the table and are now second from bottom. Many are tipping us to stay up, but it won’t be easy. Ten points is a lot to a team that survived by two points and four points in the last couple of seasons.
We’d have been relegated eleven times in the Premier League era if we faced a similar deduction in past seasons1.
From a fan perspective, it plunges us right back in the mire, all the stresses of the past two seasons are buzzing overhead like flies. The Blue Room’s Matt Jones, speaking on the Athletic’s Totally Football pod captured the feeling perfectly. Namely that we’ll be galvanized against United, but that the emotion could be “fragile” if we suffer a setback… We’re a brittle, damaged lot, and a loss could see stresses and grumbles bubble to the surface. Have a listen to Matt here:
Do we really deserve to go down for losing £19.5 million over what we should have per Profitability & Sustainability rules?
Should our mitigating factors, presented to the independent commission and summarily rejected, have carried more weight? Just looking at one of them, “Player X” - our record signing, being released for nowt meaning we were able to recoup nothing, is a huge mitigating factor.
Claims of whataboutery should get in the bin
Whataboutery. It’s an easy word to toss around, but from Everton’s perspective it makes a lot of sense to ask about other investigations into profit and sustainability breaches. We don’t exist as isolated teams, we’re in a league, we play each other, we buy and sell players to each other, we’re all interconnected.
The daily football chatter, as regular as chittering birds as the sun rises, is about a need for consistency. Consistency with refereeing, VAR, hand balls - it’s the keystone to a healthy league. But the moment we mention consistency with punishments for City (or Chelsea) we’re told that we’re engaging in whataboutery. F*ck that.
This whole thing smacks of Oumar Niasse’s ban but on a much grander scale. Our Oumar was the first player to be retroactively banned for two games for trying to hoodwink the referee with a dive.
Per the FA:
“Mr. Niasse exxagerated the effect of a normal contact to deceive the referee. The movements of Mr. Niasse’s body, in particular thw arching of the back and the collapsing of both legs, were simply not consistent with the amount of force exerted upon him”
This is the whataboutery mother lode.
From Eze to Grealish to Salah, you see players falling to the floor in the penalty box multiple times per game. But we were made example of, a precedent was set, and that precent was swiftly tossed in the bin. It’ll be the same with our points deduction. No one else will see a points deduction like this - the biggest in the league’s history. How can I be so sure? Because the Premier League’s self styled “Big Six” conspired to ditch the entire league in a mass super league elopement and got off with a voluntary fine less than the current price you’d have to pay to secure the services of the hapless Michael Keane. As Toffeeweb’s Lyndon Lloyd wrote:
amid the myriad concerns about the process that led to this decision, two lend this Independent Commission more than an air of "show trial".
The best bit about Everton’s statement after the deduction was the final line, a little nibble back, noting that we’d "monitor with great interest the decisions made in any other cases concerning the Premier League's Profit and Sustainability Rules.”
Our one charge is minuscule compared to Man City’s 115. And Chelsea - in a normal world - would be charged soon too, as new evidence has come out just days ago about Ambramovich and his secret payments. But when is this going to happen? The Premier League has been investigating Man City since December 2018. They’ve been looking at this case for FIVE YEARS, and still haven’t come up with any sort of report. The leaked Man City emails and subsequent expose by Der Spiegel surely present something of an open goal to the commisision.
It’s a complex case, yes, certainly compared to the pretty open and shut Everton case, but five years? UEFA already tried to take City to task over multiple egregious FFP violations, even waving a Champions League ban in front of them, and the case was eventually thrown out by CAS due to a statute of limitations technicality. City were still fined nearly £9m, for persistent obstruction of investigations.
Certainly, a large slice of the blame pie can be put on Man City’s plate for dragging their heels on an industrial scale. It’s another reason why I don’t think they’ll ever be punished. One of the most eye opening of all the Man City email leaks was from general counsel Simon Cliff who - during UEFA’s FFP investigation into the club - said that City’s chairman told Gianni Infantino that he
“would rather spend £30m on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next 10 years.”
Anyway, enough whataboutery, eh?
It’s clear from the independent commission’s report that we’re an utter mess of a club, budgeting to finish 6th under Benitez, having no midfield to speak of, and sailing far too close to breaching profit and sustainability rules, but in delivering a horribly unfair ten point deduction they’ve put the issues of every grumbling and dissassitfied Evertonian into context - we’re all focused on one thing now. Supporting our blues. Poor Man Utd are visiting on Sunday for what promises to be a Krakatoan Goodison receiption. UTFT.
92-93 - Would have been relegated on 43 points, 21st place, second from bottom.
93-94 - Would have been relegated on 34 points, 21st place, second from bottom.
94-95 - Would have been relegated on 40 points, 20th place, third from bottom.
95-96 - 10th place, 51 points
96-97 - Would have been relegated on 32 points, 20th place, bottom of the league.
97-98 - Would have been relegated on 30 points, 20th place, bottom of the league.
98-99 - Would have been relegated on 33 points, 19th place, second from bottom.
99-00 - 16th place, 40 points
00-01 - Would have been relegated on 32 points, 19th place, second from bottom.
01-02 - Would have been relegated on 33 points, 18th place, third from bottom.
02-03 - 12th place, 49 points
03-04 - Would have been relegated on 29 points, 20th place, bottom of the league.
04-05 - 10th place, 51 points
05-06 - 17th place, 40 points
06-07 - 12th place, 48 points
07-08 - 9th place, 55 points
08-09 - 7th place, 53 points
09-10 - 9th place, 51 points
10-11 - 15th place, 44 points
11-12 - 13th place, 46 points
12-13 - 8th place, 53 points
13-14 - 8th place, 62 points
14-15 - 17th place, 37 points
15-16 - 17th place, 37 points
16-17 - 7th place, 51 points
17-18 - 16th place, 39 points
18-19 - 15th place, 44 points
19-20 - 16th place, 39 points
20-21 - 11th place, 49 points
21-22 - Would have been relegated on 29 points, 18th place, third from bottom.
22-23 - Would have been relegated on 26 points, 19th place, second from bottom.