What exactly are Everton in trouble for?

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire revealed to BBC Radio 5 Live the reasons behind Everton’s trouble with the Premier League: “Under the Premier League rules, you are allowed to lose £105m over a three year period. If you spend money on infrastructure, the women’s team, community schemes or the academy then those costs are excluded.

“Everton have been in the process of moving to a new stadium and therefore would argue that all stadium costs should have been excluded from the calculations.

“The argument hinges over whether money borrowed from the club was ‘general borrowings’ or specifically in relation to the stadium, which is essentially a free pass. Everton’s argument is the money went into the stadium fund, the Premier League has taken the alternative view, meaning they have breached the loss limit.

“The other issue is in relation to Covid. Everton argued they’d signed a few players where the transactions hadn’t worked out. Under normal circumstances, Everton would have tried to move those players on after a year, 18 months. They’ve not be able to do so because the European market had disappeared. Nobody was signing players in Europe so they weren’t able to recover part of their investment there.”