Yes - that’s probably the most galling point!
If the appeal is sorted out in 3 months (and does not leave open to an increase in level of deduction), then appealing this season would be a no-brainer.
Not sure how i feel about points deductions. They are probably the only form of penalty that has “teeth”, but horrible for fans.
Unless the bar stewards do what they did with Saints when we went into administration with only a few games left at the end of the season. It went along the lines of “we’ll deduct it this season, but if by some miracle you stay up, then we’ll deduct it at the start of next season”.
As noted, a right bunch of Bar Stewards!
Cripes. Bar …… is an understatement!
Arsenal are the cheats Bob.
How far down would a 1,150 points deduction take city?
It’s hard to believe that any of the EPL’s big spenders (which is most of them) have done everything in an above-board fashion.
I wouldn’t shed a tear for Manchester City or Chelsea, but it’s very harsh on Everton.
Newcastle might have to rethink how they’re going to bend the rules for whatever splurge they had in mind.
Trent Alexander is obviously Havertz 2.
A coach desperately trying to find a place to fit him into the team.
Old boy’s club.
As a fan of the first club to be hit with a points deduction it’s an immensely unsatisfactory solution as it doesn’t prevent the issue of incompetent or malicious ownership. It’s very cheap to take a hit at a club in these circumstances. It implies there’s a cultural issue whereas the reality is that owners have no absolute guarantees over who they sell to nor how it plays out in the media.
We were purchased by two people with nothing but criminal intent from the off. Our benign previous owner has been accused of all sorts of failings but he could neither have known that nor stopped it. Fascinatingly there are still many high profile managers and ex players with opinions on us which bear zero relation to the facts out in the public domain. Baseless claims of over-spending etc. Brilliantly we’re now a Hollywood fairy story when we’re actually a basket case in the making. The ironies never end.
I strongly suggest the banter merchants amongst you restrain yourselves. This is not an opportunity to score. Focus on the fans, the players and the hundreds who work at the club. The fall out of this will be immense and there is a very real human cost on levels most of you fans of banter seem wilfully ignorant of.
The idea it only leaves them two points from safety is incidentallyirrelevant. The real damage is to morale within the club from top to bottom. When we had our points deduction we had a team good enough to easily make the play offs and higher. We were relegated and the impact was so great it kept on reverberating and was entirely responsible for our sinking into non-league.
Tbf, we might do quite well there.
@mikehughescq as an Evertonian myself and having gone through a number of years of hardship I’m not sure how much morale will be affected - personally I think it will only make us stronger and I have no fears about us being relegated, we will still stay up even if the points deduction stands.
As an addendum, reading many of your Football League posts with interest my second team, who I followed home and away for quite a few years, is Macclesfield FC (or Macclesfield Town FC as they were known then). I’m sure you are well aware of their woes and how they have risen back up, albeit at a rather lowly level.
Maybe 
But square pegs in round holes, and the like…
Surely JWP et. al. will be wondering why they bother.
69 mins in - can we all petition to have TAA subbed ?
Don’t want to depress you but I just wouldn’t be that optimistic. The history of clubs with really decent first teams who were hit with a points deduction is bleak. Plenty of tales of clubs who wiped out the deficit quickly; thought they were on the up and then sank back again. Having a good manager; a competitive or even really good team and great fans are largely irrelevant things. What’s unspoken is that these things eat a club from top to bottom. Chief Exec to tea boy and the surrounding community. It’s insidious. No amount of happy clappy optimism or previous resilience can prepare you for it. It’s an almost invisible draining of the life force of a club.
Denis Smith described the 04/05 relegation of a Wrexham team he built for promotion as “the most harrowing, distressing footballing time of my life”. Really talented squad capable of massive self-motivation fell away almost imperceptibly. One of our strikers from back then was recently on a podcast where he talked about how it was only with our promotion last season his mental health and morale had started to wipe away the past. That’s nearly two decades of poor health totally triggered by one thing in one season. Thought it was a nice summary of the devastation.
By all means talk to fans of other clubs who’ve been through it. I’d be shocked if you could find one who disagreed. Only bad things are coming sadly. Likely to be compounded by your new owners too.
Well I disagree. Glasgow Rangers were demoted to the third division.in Scotland in 2012 by the cabal of imbeciles running Scottish football at the time. 50,000 supporters at Ibrox to watch village teams regardless. Only 10 years later, lost the Europa League final on penalties. In the process, lifted Scotland’s UEFA co-efficient enough to get back the guaranteed place in Champions League lost in the interim.
A points deductions is the only way to punish rule-breaking football clubs. Financial penalties mean nothing to owners who often have limitless wealth. If someone can suggest a better sanction, I’m all ears.
However, as always, it’s the fans that suffer, and I do feel for the Everton fans tonight. They have proved in recent seasons that there is some fight in the dog, and they will stay up this season.
Personally think Everton have got away with one. Minus 10 leaves them needing to beat Luton to get back out of the drop zone, Luton a side I expect was built for little more than the cost of Everton’s legal fees. I’d say the EPL don’t want Everton to drop (they want the new stadium in the EPL) but wanted to at least suggest they were baring their teeth. I’d expect Everton to avoid the drop given the calibre of the 3 clubs that came up. Siege mentality & its job done. Our minus 15 season in Div 1 was great for that reason. So for me Everton have a light touch punishment and will be fine.
City & Chelsea next up. Be surprised if anyone’s taking City’s trophies off them through points deductions.
False equivalence. Forced relegation is devastating but it’s a sudden shock which often puts you in an excellent position to progress back up because few have the chance to contractually jump the sunken ship. Crowds will still turn up etc.There’s been no slow demoralisation and gutting from the inside out. The “ebbing away” as it was once so beautifully put.
It’s an entirely different experience. One of the lovely gents at Begbies Traynor who handled advising Rangers on their finances after the forced demotion also handled our administration. Came to speak at a football writing event and that absolute contrast was one of his biggest points. There is no comparison at all to be drawn between forced relegation and a points deduction.
Macclesfield Town are a similar example. The demotion put them on an immediate upward trajectory. A points deduction does the exact opposite.
Massively overthought. I am sadly confident that what I have predicted above will come to pass.
Then Everton should insist on relegation and have a go at Wrexham.
Seriously, Rangers lost a bunch of key players to the Premier League.
You have a bit of a point Mike, but false equivalence is stretching it.
The point being that it overwhelmingly hasn’t been used to punish so-called “rule breaking clubs”. It’s largely been used to punish clubs shafted by near criminal or actually criminal owners. The numbers of clubs with deductions run into the 20s. In almost every case the issue was not “the club”, which constitutes all employees, but the owners.
In the majority of cases the owners have not been prevented from involvement in business or the business of football but it’s the owners who have broken rules not the club itself.
To this day Wrexham AFC are described as a rule breaking club who become the first to be given a points deduction for going into administration. Thus the narrative of several very thick ex managers, current managers, ex players and the media in general (not forgetting experts on internet forums with zero experience of football finance) who proclaim loudly that we went into administration to avoid having to pay debts because we spent more money than we had coming in.
We were actually put into administration because our two owners effectively turned off income streams in an attempt to starve us out of the stadium so it could be sold and the club itself he left homeless. Two legendary board members were sharp enough to realise that putting us into admin. when the evil Hamilton resigned from the board in a fit of temper was the only way to save us. Long term that is fortunately how or played out. Still the false narrative persists.
