Two-tiers of justice in English Premier League

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This article was published 17/11/2023 (1046 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s the same old story.

Identical crimes, punished in one case and forgiven in another. A set of poor decisions, ruinous for someone and swept under the rug for someone else.

The tax police, auditing the working poor while the one percent pay little if anything. (Not two years ago, while clawing back folks’ pandemic lifelines, the CRA failed to repatriate more than $400 million kept by Loblaws in Barbados. The grocery chain has never had a store in Barbados; meanwhile food prices skyrocket.)

“Rules for thee and not for me.” The rhyme almost makes it sound playful. Which is appropriate, as the powerful make a joke out of gaming the system.

In a rather less consequential scenario, given the stakes, Everton Football Club were docked 10 points on Friday for breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules – a judgement, subject to appeal, that leaves them second from bottom and in danger of relegation.

Not surprisingly, countersuits, lawsuits and rumours of lawsuits are already flying about, with Burnley, Leeds, Leicester and Southampton each mulling legal action over Everton’s misdealings, they argue, that led at least in part to their own relegations from England’s top flight.

But they’re only a small part of the story here; as, for that matter, are Everton. With all due respect, and as massive as a relegation would be, and has been, to these clubs and their fanbases, few people beyond their metro areas would, and will, remember it happening a decade from now.

Portsmouth’s nine-point penalty in 2010, for example, is already a matter of trivia for anyone not living on the south coast. And forget about Middlesbrough’s three-point deduction of 1996. Literally, it’s forgotten.

No, the real story is not about who has been disciplined, but rather who hasn’t. And it’s not been lost on anyone.

Friday’s ruling, handed down by an independent panel consisting of a barrister King’s Counsel, a judge and a chartered accountant, rightfully found Everton guilty of what the Premier League argued were essentially four breaches of its financial fair play regimen.

“This was a serious breach that requires a significant penalty,” the panel stated in a written explanation. Nearer the top of the 41-page document was a rather more troubling assertion: “This is a complicated case.”

It will have been music to Manchester City’s ears.

Last February, City were presented 115 allegations of profit and sustainability malpractice. No one was the least bit shocked. It seems there are two ways to go from third-tier football to Premier League champions in 13 years – masterful sporting oversight unprecedented in the history of the sport, and financial manipulation – and there has never been a mystery as to which route the club took.

But if four offenses are “complicated” and require a series of amended charges and pleas, as well as a roster of witnesses, how much more tangled are 115? City are by now accustomed to running up the score on their opponents, but 115-4 is a bit inflated, even for them.

Of course, we know how this plays out.

Everton’s case might have been tricky, but City’s is so phenomenally elaborate as to be impenetrable. And that’s by design. As the guiltiest know, it’s always safer to be really, really guilty, and guilty all over the place, because, at some point, you’ll simply have racked up too much guilt for any entity to conceivably prosecute.

In Spain, for example, where diminutive Girona are suddenly two points clear of Real Madrid atop La Liga, what would otherwise be a quite sensational narrative is dampened by the reality that the Blanquivermells are owned by City Football Group – a Manchester City shell company in everything but name, and one of 12 such entities on four continents. And CFG operates at a staggering annual loss.

Throw the book at City and they’re a non-league operation overnight. Though it will never happen. Not because they’re innocent, but because they’re now perennially the best team in England and holders of the Champions League. Neither the Premier League nor UEFA could endure the embarrassment.

It all makes one wonder if we don’t actually despise the little guys for trying to keep up with the big fellas, even if it means breaking a few rules.

You have your Evertons, desperate for a place at the table, to be part of the establishment. And you have your Citys: “Let them eat cake.”

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