⚽️ Everton Threatened with 12-Point Deduction for FFP Breaches

Good morning. The Premier League is big business. Today’s top stories touch on the high end (a potential £80 million transfer) and the low end (a potential points deduction for breach of Financial Fair Play guidelines) of the business of soccer.

In the email today:

Financial Fair Play, the UEFA policy that tries to ensure that clubs do not spend more on players than their revenue can support, hasn’t really worked. The most moneyed clubs are always finding loopholes. For a smaller, grass-roots club like Everton, though, FFP is a real land mine. It costs a lot of money to stay in the Premier League, and Everton doesn’t have the revenue streams of, say, Liverpool or Arsenal or Chelsea. Apparently, for Everton, the bill is coming due.

• The Premier League is considering a significant points deduction for Everton if they are found guilty of breaching Financial Fair Play rules.

• The Premier League is preparing for a potential guilty verdict and is recommending a 12-point deduction for Everton if wrongdoing is proven.

• Everton currently sits 16th in the Premier League, and if the points deduction is imposed, they would drop to minus five points.

• Everton faced charges for breaching financial rules in March, with reported losses of nearly £372 million over a three-year period while the limit is £105 million.

• The club denies any wrongdoing, citing allowances granted by the Premier League due to the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Leeds, Leicester, and Burnley have warned Everton's future owners, 777 Partners, of potential lawsuits amounting to £300 million if Everton is found guilty of financial rule breaches to avoid relegation over the past two seasons.

Our take: Everton avoided relegation by two points last season. They are three points from the relegation places in the table today. Forget a 12-point deduction — any points Everton are docked could mean a one-way ticket to the Championship. And that last bullet point is significant. Clubs like Leeds and Leicester who missed out on Premier League revenue sharing in recent seasons have a legitimate gripe. Watch this space.

2) 🔴 Arsenal, Chelsea Are in on Brentford’s Ivan Toney

This may seem so obvious as to be unnecessary to say, but the hardest thing to do in soccer is to score goals. Parking the bus and grinding out a 0-0 draw, most teams can do that if that’s all they have to do. The players who can break the line and bulge the net are the ones hardest to come by. Chelsea and Arsenal, two teams that lack an out-and-out striker, know this, and Brentford has a player who could fill that hole.

• Chelsea and Arsenal are both monitoring the situation of Brentford's striker Ivan Toney, who has expressed a desire for a new chapter in his career.

• Brentford is willing to let Toney leave if a suitable offer is made, as confirmed by manager Thomas Frank, who acknowledges the club's status as a selling club under the right conditions.

• Toney's potential transfer fee is estimated to be around £80 million, with the possibility of it increasing if multiple clubs enter a bidding war.

• Toney is currently serving an eight-month ban for breaching the Football Association's gambling rules and cannot play until January 17, 2024.

• Both Chelsea and Arsenal have struggled with scoring goals this season.

• Toney's 20 Premier League goals last season, and his relative youth (Toney is 27, in or entering his prime) are why he is such a transfer target.

Our take: There is never a good time to be serving an eight-month suspension in the middle of a successful career. But it definitely seems that Toney’s stock, if anything, has risen as he has been sidelined. Had Toney started slowly this season, no one would be talking about paying £80 million for him. This is a very rare instance where not playing actually made Toney look better than actually playing might have.

3) ❌ Tweet of the Day: The Man Has a Point

Yeah, but can Everton win the Champions League, which burnishes the Premier League’s standing globally? That’s what’s really at work here. That, and cargo ships full of gold.

4) 🗳️ Which Premier League Team’s Champions League Match Will You Watch Today?

Have additional thoughts? Reply directly to this email to comment, and see if we include your response tomorrow.

5) 🔗 Links Roundup:

• 😢 Everton is mourning the loss of their longtime chairman Bill Kenwright at age 78.

• 🌈 The Premier League talks a good game with regards to diversity, but the league’s boardrooms don’t reflect commitment to equality.

• 🔴 Manchester United targets of derision Harry Maguire and Andre Onana keyed the Red Devils to a Champions League group stage win over Copenhagen.

• 🔫 Gabriel Jesus, whose job would be threatened if Ivan Toney turns up at the Emirates, scored for Arsenal in their UCL group stage win over Sevilla.

• 🏆️ Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is worried not only about the opposition in tonight’s UCL group stage match with Young Boys — he’s worried about his team playing on artificial turf.

The newsletter today was written by Phil Keidel. Follow Phil @philkeidel on X.

Thanks for reading!