The Dock Road in Liverpool is more beautiful than its name suggests. It exudes echoes of that city’s great maritime past – from the redbrick warehouses to the names of the old shipyards, ‘Trafalgar’, ‘Victoria’, ‘Nelson’, carved into the mighty granite dock wall.
There’s the moving simplicity of the turquoise plaque marking the 150th anniversary of Ireland’s Great Famine. ‘Through these gates passed most of the 1,300,000 Irish migrants.’
In the ten years I worked in Liverpool, from 1989, the Dock Road was on its uppers, fading away like the pubs which thrived when the dock workers packed them out, but the last few years have promised a different trajectory.
The construction down there of a football stadium to house Everton Football Club is perhaps the most significant boost to Liverpool’s regeneration since the rebirth of the Albert Dock, in the early 1980s.
Outlay on a stadium like that is about as far removed as you will get from the speculative, jam-tomorrow transfer spending which football’s financial sustainability rules are designed to prevent.
The goal posts seem to have changed for Sean Dyche’s Everton – fans have a right to feel angry
Everton were handed a 10-point deduction for breaching the Premier League’s financial rules
Everton are in the process of constructing their new stadium at Bramley Moore Dock (above)
That’s why, when UEFA set up their own Financial Fair Play system, bricks and mortar spend was not counted. It meant that Manchester City could throw £200million Abu Dhabi cash at building one the world’s most impressive training facilities. None of it was part of the FFP calculation.
That training facility became a lucrative commercial opportunity – part of City’s groundbreaking £35million sponsorship deal with Etihad, which spawned what has become known as the ‘Etihad Campus.’ It also became a way of persuading young players to join City, rather than Manchester United.
The alleged artificial inflation of the Etihad sponsorship deal is central to the Premier League’s 115 charges against City, over breaches of sustainability rules. The investigation began five years ago and there’s still not sign of the kind of report that Everton have been hit with. That’s what the world’s most expensive lawyers buy you. City deny the charges.
Everton were given the very distinct impression that the cost of interest on loans to build their Bramley Moore Dock Stadium would be excluded from sustainability considerations, just like City’s. They argued that six other clubs had been able to keep them out of the financial calculation and that this was an investment in the long-term future of a club and its city.
The Toffees were given the very distinct impression that the cost of interest on loans to build their Bramley Moore Dock Stadium would be excluded from sustainability considerations
Dyche’s Everton side are now joint bottom of the Premier League, level on points with Burnley
Everton chief Farad Moshiri (right) stands alongside prospective owners from 777 Partners
Dominic Calvert-Lewin’s club could be in for their toughest relegation battle yet this campaign
The Premier League agreed. Last week’s independent commission report, which ruled against Everton, relates precisely when – January 14, 2021 – in black and white, in points 26 and 27 of its findings.
Yet read on a further two pages, to points 33 and 34 of the report, and you see the picture changing. It relates how a call, in December 2022, from the Premier League to Katie Charles, Everton’s director of legal services, informed the club that a subsequent stadium interest payment would count towards the losses.
There’s been a lot of chin-stroking about the ten-point punishment imposed on Everton by the Premier League for a £19.5million overspend – the cost of a decent Championship player. But precious little discussion about how those rules actually changed mid-process in Everton’s case.
No discussion, come to mention it, of how Manchester City and West Ham United were both gifted taxpayer funded stadiums, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and 2012 Olympics, respectively. Had City not settled into the stadium built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games, it is doubtful that Abu Dhabi would have even bought the club.
What wouldn’t Everton have given for a purpose-built stadium, all costs covered, to move into, during their infernal battle to get planning permission for one, stretching back the best part of 15 years? I remember sitting with their one-time chief executive Robert Elstone, in a meeting room at Goodison in 2009, hearing him describe Everton’s desperate need for a stadium to generate growth.
Everton’s capacity was – and still is – less than 40,000. City now pack in more than 53,000. West Ham attract 60,000. Everton would not have incurred this marginal breach of the sustainability rules if they had not been building a new £300million football stadium to help protect their Premier League future.
Toffees supporters will continue to rally behind their team as they fight for top flight survival
Mayor of Liverpool Steve Rotheram (above) has branded the 10-point deduction as ‘excessive’
Few have provided better perspective than Jamie Carragher: ‘Certain Big Six clubs threatened to join the European Super League and received a £22million fine between them,’ he observed.
It’s hard to overstate the indignation felt by the club’s fans at the sheer disproportionality of last week’s judgement. The GoFund me page set up to find cash for banners protesting the decision has raised £40,000. The Premier League might consider whether it really wants to suffer the indignity of trying to broadcast its ‘anthem’ before Everton play Manchester United at Goodison on Sunday. ‘We’re coming for you,’ states a banner placed at the club’s training ground.
But beyond that febrile indignation, there is an argument of cool logic to be made about the value of a stadium which, whilst draining Everton’s cash now, will serve club and city in years to come. Bramley Moore is a mere 20-minute walk out from the Liver Building and will extend the city’s footprint.
‘This is a massive opportunity for that area to be properly regenerated and Everton and that stadium would be an anchor to that renaissance,’ Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram told me recently.
It was Peter Reid, writing in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday, who pointed out the flagrant contradiction of that arena on the Mersey’s banks – paraded with bells and whistles by the FA as a tournament venue for the UK’s 2028 Euros – dragging Everton into a ten-point deduction. ‘It seems wrong to me that some of Everton’s issues revolve around the building of a new stadium that will also be used for the country’s benefit at the European Championships,’ Reid said.
It’s hard to put things any better than that.
Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher also agreed that the punishment was surprising given that big six clubs eager to start the European Super League were only given a fine between them
Mendy bid could set troubling precedent
Yes of course, the disclosure that the dismal Benjamin Mendy is suing Manchester City for £10million in wages not paid to him during his trial on multiple charges of rape and sexual assault makes your heart sink.
He’s apparently struggling to pay the British tax authorities a debt of nearly £800,000, too. This is a player who earned £90,000 a week.
Mail Sport columnist Ian Herbert
Mendy was acquitted of six charges of rape and one sexual assault relating to four women, before two more not-guilty verdicts were returned at a retrial, but his trial revealed a despicable attitude towards women and he will hopefully remain where he belongs, in football obscurity with FC Lorient in the depths of the French Ligue.
But the broader concern relates to whether other players will attempt to sue former clubs. For example, might the Everton player suspended and released by the club after he was arrested in 2021 on suspicion of child sexual abuse offences, attempt the same for loss of projected earnings?
Greater Manchester Police said this year that no further action would be taken against the player. It’s not inconceivable that clubs will write clauses into players’ contracts governing situations like this.
Truly, a development to make your heart sink.
Benjamin Mendy is seeking back unpaid salary from Manchester City, it was revealed this week
The Frenchman’s contract with Man City expired in June 2023, but they stopped paying him in September 2021 as he was facing trial for a string of sex offences, which he denied
Digging out an old classic
A wet Sunday afternoon last weekend brought a dusting down of the ancient PlayStation 2, languishing in the back of a cupboard. And, after the 15-minute process of loading the disc, a match ensued between my grandson and me on the FIFA 2005 game which has been untouched since our own kids played it.
His Manchester United against my Bristol Rovers (nice kit) was a throwback to the days when Ronaldo, Keane, van Nistelrooy and Co wore United’s jerseys. A reminder, if needed, of how far they have fallen.
The commentary was provided by John Motson whose contribution was, of course, hugely enthusiastic. ‘What on earth’s the keeper doing?’ ‘Didn’t ever see that coming?’ ‘He’s put that in the back of the stand!’ How much we miss that man.
I lost 4-0. Some things don’t change.
