Is appeal verdict a victory for Everton or cause for more concern?

Why has the original 10-point punishment been reduced?

The appeal board has imposed a six-point deduction with immediate effect having concluded that “the commission made legal errors” when hitting Everton with the biggest sporting sanction in Premier League history last year. The commission was wrong, it said, to say that Everton had been “less than frank” about the debt incurred for the construction of the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock and had therefore breached another Premier League rule, B.15, that says clubs have an obligation to act in “utmost good faith”.

Secondly, the commission was wrong not to take into account available benchmarks when deciding the punishment. It was a material error not to consider the sanction formula used by the EFL, for example. Everton had argued that the fines and suspended points deductions given to the six Premier League clubs who attempted to join the European Super League should have been used as a benchmark.

So the appeal is a victory for Everton?

No. The club claim they have been “vindicated” by the appeal and that is true to an extent (a four-point extent, to be exact) but, importantly, the board rejected seven of the nine grounds of appeal put forward by the “super silk” Laurence Rabinowitz KC. Everton had presented as mitigating factors for their breach of £19.5m the loss of sponsorship deals with companies connected to the oligarch Alisher Usmanov, who was sanctioned by the UK government following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Usmanov, his former business partner and Everton owner Farhad Moshiri claimed, was close to signing a lucrative naming rights deal for the new stadium when the war broke out. The interest on loans taken out during the accounting period –