I feel Everton are being punished for daring to dream

Michael Ball tackles the big issues at Goodison Park after Everton were hit with a new PSR charge by the Premier League

Everton are being punished for daring to dream - Man City spent a decade doing what they wanted

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Here we go again… another charge for Everton.

We’d all like to be talking about football and how Everton could start climbing the table and closing the gap on the Premier League’s elite and we tried that when Farhad Moshiri came in. We’re still waiting on the result of the appeal against out 10-point deduction but hopefully that is over sooner rather than later so the players and managers can focus on the job at hand.

It’s disappointing that we’re wasting a lot of time and effort over this situation and it doesn’t seem right to me. For many years, a lot of Evertonians have questioned the way that the club was being run and were getting hushed by outside voices telling them that they were crazy but it’s now come to fruition that the club isn’t being run as well as we’d have liked.

Yes, we’ve got excuses but every club is in the same boat. We want to try and close the gap on the big six but now they’re going to get rid of these rules for next season which I find absolutely baffling.

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The only way for Everton to try and close that gap was to build a new stadium and generate more income. Unfortunately, we seem to be getting penalised for doing this and building a stadium at possibly the worst time ever after Covid-19 and with the war in Ukraine, which seems very harsh to me.

I remember reading a column by David Levy where he said timing was everything and he understands that if Tottenham Hotspur wanted to build their new stadium now then it would have been impossible because of the amount that costs have gone up. Arsenal had the opportunity to build their fantastic new stadium before that so they could keep competing.

It feels like Everton are being punished for off-the-field developments as they try to make the club much better. I could understand if we were spending money to put the club at risk and the players weren’t getting paid but everybody knows we’re trying to build a state-of-the-art stadium because this is the only way to do so.

We’re not allowed to have a wealthy owner to come in and spend what they like. They’ve put these rules in but they don’t seem fit for purpose, they’re getting rid of them, so they acknowledge that themselves.

It feels like they’re trying to protect the established elite in the Premier League. Manchester City, one of my ex-clubs, had a decade of doing whatever they wanted to be in the situation where they are now and attract the best players.

The Premier League has long been the most-attractive domestic division in world football because teams could attract the best players. Even in my generation, I remember Sheffield Wednesday getting Paolo Di Canio.

You had the opportunity to try and dream. Now it feels like you can’t dream anymore because there are barriers are being put in place.

With them changing it again, it questions the legality of the sport that we all love. We understand that there have been sad stories in the past with smaller clubs like Bury but it’s obvious that Everton are building a great new facility which will regenerate a difficult area.

We know that previously we’ve wasted money on transfers and that it hasn’t been good enough but we’re still paying the price for that. If you’re going to have to keep selling your best players to balance the books, no team is ever going to catch up.

If you look at our spending over transfers for the last few years, we’re nowhere near the levels when Moshiri first came in and I think only Luton Town and Brighton & Hove Albion – who sold Moises Caicedo for £115million – are below us last season for net spend. Since Everton became aware of the first breach, the club have put a lot of effort in to try and get to the right levels so if we were to get punished again then it would feel like double jeopardy.

As football fans, we seem to spend all our time talking about these financial issues or VAR and we just want to go back to discussing the good and bad of what happened in a match and how they played. I’ve always said that Sean Dyche is the right man at the helm in this situation but we are where we are.

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