I like Carragher but his Everton article is silly. Everton’s accountants overbook their books. It’s right that Premier League finally start punishing these clubs and not letting them get away with dodgy accounting with tough penalties.
If Everton think their punishment is harsh, think of Luton’s -30pt deduction. That was certainly a disgrace as that effectively relegated them before the season started.
We just got to see now if the Premier League have testicles the size of watermelons to punish City. It cannot be through fines as such would be meaningless given the league’s wealth. If guilty, and given the potential scale of breaches, I’d give them a double relegation to show the football authority actually means business.
They didn’t cook the books.
Everton never lied and there account showed everything that they did. They just over spent and disagreed with the premier league on what costs should not have been included in the FFP calculations. The main costs that they said should not be included were interest on the stadium loans and 40m of stadium costs that they ran up before planning permission was given for the stadium.
You can show everything on a balance sheet, but presenting how revenues are received / taxes applied etc can be altered. The presentation of that data is the issue. I suspect that some book cooking has occurred. Otherwise, the penalty would not be as large as it is.
Obviously my opinion, but my view is informed articles i’ve read The Athletic, Telegraph). Although I’m not a fan of him, Simon Jordan (Talksport) even considers that account fixing by Everton must be so evident given the penalty scale (link here). That’s important to highlight given his business acumen and ex-owner status.