Football finance expert analyses impact of Burnley/Everton court ruling
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The controversial £35m legal ruling between Burnley and Everton could open an “enormous” can of worms.
That’s according to football finance expert Kieran Maguire, who believes Burnley’s multi-million pound awarding could be just the tipping edge for other football disputes to make their way to court.
That breach led to Everton being docked 10 points in late 2023 , which was reduced to six points on appeal in early 2024.
Burnley subsequently sued Everton after it was relegated to the Championship in 2022, the same year that Everton breached the PSR.
Premier League’s rules allow for clubs to seek compensation from other clubs for rule breaches that cause them loss.
It is believed that part of Burnley’s claim is that, had the six-point deduction taken place in 2022, Everton would have been relegated and Burnley would have stayed in the Premier League.
The Blues - who were then managed by Frank Lampard - finished four points above the Clarets.
The Toffees have already appealed the ruling.
Maguire, a senior teacher in accountancy at the University of Liverpool who is behind the Price of Football podcast, weighed in on the ruling.
“[It could open] an enormous can of worms,” he told talkSPORT.
“I think anybody who's listening to this who is of young age and is thinking of a career, sports law and sports finance is well worth considering.
“Everton will be understandably, I think, quite aggrieved because their argument, I suspect, will be that if we knew that we were in breach of PSR, they would have sold a player by the June 30, 2022. That would have avoided going over the limit and nothing else would have happened.
“I think Everton's case, if you take a look at the original ruling, was that they were being penalised for an argument over accounting in terms of the way that the interest on the loan was being treated and therefore they gained no sporting advantage. It looks as if the commission hasn't agreed with that position.
“You'd think it's their responsibility to know if they've broken PSR or not. Well, Everton's argument at the time, if you go back to the original verdict, was: ‘we borrowed money to fund the stadium rather than to fund the football team and therefore we didn't gain anything on the pitch. If we didn't gain anything on the pitch, why should we have a points deduction on the back of that?’
“I suspect what the commission has done, it will have used some form of spreadsheet, some form of statistical analysis, to work out the probability of things being different and Everton being relegated and Burnley not being relegated and the financial benefits for Burnley as a consequence of that.”
When asked about the potential implications for other breaches of Premier League rules, such as Chelsea or Manchester City, Maguire added: “Well, are we setting a precedent that if a club is in receipt of a points deduction now, and there could be an argument that that points deduction should have been given in previous years, then should we have to go and revise the Premier League table retrospectively in terms of how the prize money is allocated, how Champions League prize money would be therefore available to a club that perhaps finished fifth, that might have otherwise finished fourth in the Premier League and so on.
“We do have a sort of a precedent of this in the sense that, if you recall the Carlos Tevez case, where West Ham ended up giving Sheffield United a sizable amount of compensation, well over £20m.
“Off the back of that, and we've got settlements between Middlesbrough and Derby, and Wycombe Wanderers and Derby, does it mean the breaches of PSR have consequences for sides who are otherwise relegated or didn't get into play-offs or similar?”
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