Everton pay price of leadership’s manic spending and blind eye to warnings

Since Farhad Moshiri first invested in Everton in 2016, the direction of the club has swayed in the wind while he only joined the club’s board in June. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images

The severity of Everton’s punishment is up for debate but the club breaking their permitted financial fair play spend is not. For that there is plenty of blame to go round at Goodison Park after years of dysfunctional thinking has left the club in a perilous position.

Some would argue that £19.5m is not much in the modern game, it barely buys a competent full-back these days, but Everton had received plenty of warnings about where they were heading. The Premier League’s independent commission was clear in its report: “The position that Everton finds itself in is of its own making.”