Sean Dyche has said Everton have done “everything we can” to comply with Premier League financial rules during his 12 months in charge but are being hit with sporting penalties for no sporting advantage.
Everton are at risk of being deducted points twice in the same season after being charged on Monday with another breach of Premier League profit and sustainability rules (PSR) for the year ending June 2023.
Dyche’s team are already working under a 10-point deduction issued in November: the club are in the process of appealing against that sanction. The latest breach covers a period when Everton, under Frank Lampard, bought Amadou Onana, Dwight McNeil, Neal Maupay and James Garner despite warnings from the Premier League over their spending.
Only Brighton and Luton of current Premier League clubs, however, have a lower net spend on transfers than Everton over the past five years and Dyche said his club could not have done any more to reduce their losses since his arrival.
The Everton manager, in a lengthy defence of the troubled club, said: “Since I’ve been here we’ve let players go out of contract when some of them we would have kept. We have been working hard to lower everything. We sold three young players in the timelines we were given to make sure the money was in. We wouldn’t normally have sold those young players.
“The new stadium speaks for itself, and the effect that will have on the city. The old stadium will be developed for good causes. Alongside that we are still trying to put a team out that can be competitive, signing players on deals that are done in a year’s time [Beto’s transfer fee is paid this summer], and then you end up with an on-pitch sanction when we’ve tried to do everything we can to solve all these conundrums.
“There have been mistakes made I’m sure down the years, that is a natural part of football, particularly in player trading. But there is a lot going on at this football club to try and do it right. And then in amongst it there is a war [Everton ended lucrative sponsorship deals with companies connected to Alisher Usmanov after the oligarch was sanctioned by the UK government following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine].”
Dyche confirmed Everton’s second charge is “similar” to the first – no details, nor the club’s latest accounts, have been disclosed so far – but the appeal against the 10-point deduction is the priority.
“The thing we are scratching our head about is the first situation and our focus remains on the appeal,” he said. “I remember the early days of PSR when the idea was about protecting clubs and to bring finance into a more controllable situation. I haven’t lost sight of that. But, going back to the pitch, it’s a football sanction not for footballing reasons because we haven’t gained anything from all the things I’ve just told you. There has been no on-pitch gain and yet we’ve got an on-pitch situation.”
