This week, it was revealed that Everton had received a significant upgrade in their financial fair play report.
Trial of Toffees once more
This season, Sean Dyche’s Everton have already experienced the repercussions of breaking the Premier League’s FFP regulations once; they were fined six points (originally 10 until the deduction was lowered on appeal).
They are currently awaiting their second decision after Nottingham Forest was penalized four points for a previous infraction last week. They will still have to wait a long to find out their fate, though.
Mark Chapman stated during an appearance on 5 Live’s Monday Night Club that a decision was not anticipated anytime soon.
“The deadline is April 8th, but the last I heard, it won’t be before the Premier League returns or before the international matchups. That’s what I was informed,” he told the audience.
If it happens close to that deadline, Everton could only have seven games remaining. As it stands, they have home games against Burnley and away games against Bournemouth and Newcastle United scheduled for before April 8.
If they lost points, they would probably be in the relegation zone and would be hovering just above the drop zone going into the latter stretch of the season.
Despite the enmity, Everton will have little chance of winning their Merseyside derby against high-flying Liverpool, even if they have a game in hand on most of the teams behind them.
The most recent update helps Dyche
It has now emerged, in an unexpected turn of events, that Everton are “confident they can avoid a second points deduction” this season, partly due to their “confidence that they have acted in good faith and complied with the investigation”.
Football Insider, who states that “the Merseyside club has grown in confidence that their penalty could be reduced to zero following the verdict of Nottingham Forest’s hearing,” is the source of the information provided.
Everton hopes to emulate Forest’s experience of having a six-point penalty reduced to four for cooperation, which has given rise to a “growing feeling” on the blue side of Merseyside that “an expected three-point penalty could be reduced down to zero because of mitigating factors and compliance.”
A three point deduction, should it come, would leave the club in the same position in the Premier League, but would see them just a point above the drop zone heading into the last part of the season and, with the Blues struggling to find the back of the net with any sort of regularity in the second half of the campaign, could see them in massive danger of dropping out of England’s top flight.
