Everton: Stan Collymore rages at ‘grossly unfair’ Toffees plight after Nottingham Forest sanction
Everton have been left in a “grossly unfair” situation by the financial regulation of English football, according to Stan Collymore.
The former England striker told talkSPORT live on 18 March, in the wake of news that Nottingham Forest were set to be deducted four points for a profit and sustainability breach, that clubs outside of the Champions League elite have always discriminated against on an “arbitrary” basis.
He expressed sympathy for the Toffees and Forest, and even Manchester City, for “bending the rules” when a club such as Manchester United have had no punishments over years for being hundreds of millions in debt.
Collymore said (2.21pm): “You have to look at things in the grand context of the year 1992. There was an arbitrary line drawn in English football whereby in the Premier League and the Champions League, if you happened to be in there, first it was Champions, then it was top two, then top three, top four clubs, you had all the riches that came to you and very few punitive measures that stopped you from spending.
“We have a ridiculous situation where Everton Football Club, one of the founders of the Football League, for initially a 10 points [deduction] then reduced to six for a £20million overspend.
“But Manchester United, one of the other [grandees] of English football, are three quarters of a billion pounds in debt. That to me seems grossly unfair.”
Manchester United debt ignored as Everton and Nottingham Forest penalised
Even as plenty of Evertonians have accepted the running of the club has caused it any number of problems in recent years there has been huge disquiet over the way Premier League rules have been used against the Toffees.
Nothing that has happened recently will have done anything to reduce those feelings as the picture continues to get more and more farcical in terms of a level playing field.
Not only were Everton deducted a Premier League-record 10 points, more than Portsmouth had been for going into administration, but that sanction was then brought back down to six on appeal thanks to errors by the original commission panel.
The rules were changed to speed up the process, putting the club in line to still receive a second points deduction in the same season, and then it emerged that the rules Everton had fallen foul of were being scrapped anyway.
So now that Nottingham Forest have also been punished but by less than the reduced penalty imposed at Goodison Park it is hard not to feel the system is not being applied evenly, even before the situations at the Etihad and Old Trafford come into the picture, with United still owing £733.3million despite Sir Jim Ratcliffe paying off a chunk of the total owed [Metro, 14 March].
There are differences between the Everton and Nottingham Forest situations but that still doesn’t seem to answer all the questions involved.
In other Everton news, Sean Dyche apologised over an incident that caused a stir amongst the squad.
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