Premier League can’t win Man City case and Everton are the reason why

For once, Everton will not be in the spotlight when the Premier League resumes its battle with club finances. But make no mistake – the Blues will be watching closely as the lawyers take the league’s fight to Manchester City next week.

And they have every right to feel like they have a stake in the process after a year in which it felt like Everton became the face of Premier League efforts to show it had teeth when it came to upholding the rules of a beautiful game that is becoming increasingly murky as a result of off-the-pitch controversy.

Everton has been a groundbreaking club throughout its long, proud history. But last year it achieved new firsts – the first to have a case heard under the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR), the first to be found guilty of a breach, to be punished and then face a slew of further allegations that also ended up with an independent commission ruling the club had fallen foul of the rules.

As well as the notoriety that surrounded those cases and verdicts, Everton suffered two points deductions that threatened to end the club’s tenure in the Premier League – jeopardy that was only overcome after a remarkable season on-the-pitch enabled the club to triumph over its problems off it.

But those eight points of deductions, the cases and appeals that surrounded them and the political and regulatory fallout that continues to this day were a punishing experience. Goodison Park became a place of protest against the football authorities and the league’s anthem is still booed by Blues before every match, home and away. The wounds are still open.

One of the reasons they are yet to heal is the lingering sense that Everton were made an example of by a controlling body raging through one last attempt to fight against independent regulation that seemed inevitable until it was halted by the General Election earlier this year.

That feeling has only intensified. Many of the problems faced by Everton were self-inflicted – few would argue the club has been well-run over recent, troubling years. But there remains a sense that Everton were pursued with a zeal and ruthlessness that has been absent from other cases prosecuted by the Premier League under the guise of protecting its integrity.

Everton’s breach of financial rules led to what was, until it was reduced on appeal, a record-breaking points deduction followed by a gut-punch of a second deduction just as the club was in the throes of dealing with the first.

The long-term stability of the club was put at risk as a team that would otherwise have been a whisker from the top half of the Premier League table was forced to look down rather than up.

In contrast, there is an inescapable feeling that others who have faced a reckoning with the Premier League have enjoyed more favourable outcomes. Six clubs sought to join a breakaway European Super League and were threatened with deductions but instead handed paltry fines.

Nottingham Forest committed a PSR breach almost double the size of the one that saw Everton deducted 10 points, which was later reduced to six points on appeal. Yet Forest’s punishment was smaller than both. The Premier League sought to bring a case against Leicester City under PSR until it was ruled that, as a result of the club’s relegation to the Championship, the league had no jurisdiction to do so.

Which brings us to Manchester City and the 115 charges they face – and deny – and which are set to be heard in a case that will begin on Monday. It has the potential to become a profound moment in world sport and, to some extent, there is no victory on offer to the Premier League.

Should it win its case then the verdicts will undermine the integrity of a competition City have dominated for years. Should the Premier League lose its case then its own authority will be fundamentally damaged. And any result will be set against the treatment dealt to Everton.

The City allegations cast a shadow over the Blues’ hearings last year and the punishments handed to the club felt particularly shocking given the scale of the case that was continuing in the background.

If City were to be found guilty of even a fraction of those charges, there will be an expectation the club’s punishment offers some consistency to those that have gone before them. Quite what that could be after Everton’s own stability was threatened from a much smaller case is one of the big questions surrounding this case. Everton will be watching.