Speculation has been rife as Everton wait upon the result of their appeal against their 10-point deduction
The off-the-field distractions that seem to be everywhere around Everton these days have reached a fever pitch ahead of the Crystal Palace game. Manager Sean Dyche refers to it as “the noise” and begs his players to try their best to avoid it.
With nine days separating matches since Everton’s last early kickoff at the Etihad Stadium against Manchester City, there has been a longer build-up. Since there are still a lot of unanswered questions, conjecture inevitably fills the void left by the lack of concrete information. A result of their points deduction appeal ruling was anticipated by well-placed sources when the Blues went to play the current English, European, and World champions the following week.
Everton’s appeal – which the ECHO understands ran for three days from Wednesday January 31-Friday February 2 – was presented to a fresh independent commission than the one that hit them with the most severe sporting sanction in 135 years of English top flight football for a single Financial Fair Play breach back in November. In the build-up to the club’s appeal hearing many high-profile politicians, both Evertonians and non-Blues, including Steve Rotheram, the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, who is an unabashed Reds fan, spoke out vehemently against both the harshness of the punishment, which was greater than the nine points that Portsmouth received for going into administration in the 2009/10 season, and the perceived flaws and lack of clarity in the process that led to such a conclusion being reached.
One day following the conclusion of the appeals process, Everton’s lead appeals lawyer Laurence Rabinowitz KC was photographed in the directors’ box at Goodison Park, watching the team play Tottenham Hotspur. Dubbed the “super silk,” and heralded by some as the club’s biggest addition of the season, the sixty-three-year-old is a specialist in commercial litigation and, along with Jonathan Crow and Lord Pannick KC, whom Manchester City has hired to help them fight Premier League charges, is regarded as one of the best attorneys in the nation.
Was Rabinowitz’s matchday experience merely a thank you from his client, or may the struggling Blues find solace in his public display of support? We’re still in the dark about it.
But as last week’s days passed, those outside of Everton began to wonder why they had to wait. Jamie Carragher, a former defender for Liverpool, tweeted on Wednesday, asking what was holding up the appeals court’s ruling of Everton’s 10-point deduction.
“Two weeks have passed, this is surely a matter of urgency for Everton and the clubs around them. I’m sure they and the Premier League know their decision by now. Are the Premier League waiting until after Everton’s home game…”
Carragher raises an interesting point since, had the Blues’ deduction been lessened in any way, they would have moved out of the relegation zone before their match against Crystal Palace. There won’t be a boost unless that decision is now made public within the next 24 hours.
Despite Carragher’s recommendations, the ECHO was aware that top Everton staff members had not yet received word on the appeal’s outcome on the day of his declaration.
In fact, when questioned about the wait during his pre-game news conference for the match against Crystal Palace, Dyche himself made a forceful comment.”Whatever they do, they need to get on with it,” the Everton boss stated before continuing, “Fans of all clubs want a bit of clarity in this.”
The Blues merely need to start preserving themselves in the meanwhile.Before the Eagles came to town, James Garner made it very clear, saying, “We can only control what we do, and that’s winning at the weekend.” About the points deduction, I have no idea what’s going on.
“Without that, we’d be in the middle of the table. I feel like we’ve had a better season than what we had last season.”
Everton would currently be ranked 12th in the table if the points they earned on the pitch had not been taken away from them. This is after the team finished the previous two seasons with the two lowest equivalent point totals in the club’s history and narrowly avoided relegation for the first time in 72 years last May. But despite a remarkable four-game winning streak in December, they haven’t seen Premier League success in more than two months.
Even though 777 Partners’ proposed purchase of the team has not received official sanction, Dyche’s team is now good enough to dictate their own fate on the pitch of play, regardless of how many points they claw back from the powers that be. But first, they need to win their next game against Crystal Palace in order to ensure that their last season at Goodison, the stadium that has hosted more English premier league games than any other, is not marred by the shame of being the Championship.
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