20th March 2024:

Paul: Good morning, good afternoon or good evening depending upon where in the world you are and what time of the day you’re listening to this enforced break Talking the Blues in the middle of a three-week break from the delights of watching Everton. So Andy and George you should be both super relaxed and we’re in for a pleasant hour of football chat

Andy: Oh really?

George: You reckon? we’re not before we get to the gloom can, I just ask a question I’m sure I’ve asked this before and you’ve explained it but the answer hasn’t stayed in my head.

I was watching a match the other day and the centre- forward is played through and he’s offside. The whole four back line know he’s offside, they all look at the linesman who holds his flag down, the guy goes through, he shoots. The goalie saves it and then he puts his flag up and says he was offside and the whole of the back line of defence shout and scream at him. Makes no difference had the ball gone in the net he would have still put his flag up wouldn’t he?

Andy: What is the supposed logic behind this that a man goes oh they’re offside but I’m not going to give it no matter what happens. Now I’m not going to give it until something stops. Until the play is dead.

Paul: What’s the point of that rule? It’s to stop any player, be it an attacker or a defender, stopping play because he sees the flag go up before it’s been referred to the, if indeed it is referred, to the VAR official.

George: So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the play has to play through and then it might be referred or it might not be referred. And obviously- Which is only happening in the money world. Yeah. It’s not happening in the second division or third division?

Paul: No, no, no, no. It’s to stop where there might be a marginal decision. The assistant referee, as he or she has now called, puts the flag up. And then if it went to VAR, find out that it wasn’t offside or it was offside, whichever way you want to go and the impact of having stopped the play when you didn’t need to.

Andy: So they play through to the next time that the ball goes out of play or the attack finishes and then they refer back. It’s bonkers. Sadly, the only thing that’s going to change this situation now is if and when somebody gets seriously injured.
George: But that’s what happened to Stones Andy. Yeah, he missed three weeks playing, four weeks playing.
Andy: Yeah, he did, but he did. But I’m talking about a situation where somebody might, you know, God forbid, incur a broken leg or something like that and miss six to 12 months.

That’s the only thing that will change this ridiculous ruling is if and when a player gets seriously, seriously hurt. And what is the game coming to when rule changes depend upon somebody potentially having a career ending injury?
George: And the big question there is, what is the game coming to, Andy? Well, yeah. Entirely, this is just one example of it. Well, it is. I mean, it’s exactly the same situation with all this FFP, profit and sustainability rulings that are going on, where things appear to be being made up on the hoof.

Andy: You know, we get ten points, then it gets reduced to six. Forest, who transgressed more than we did, only got four points. They transgressed more than we did. Well, we got done for nineteen point five million pound overspend
And they overspend by 34 .5 million and that was and it was all on players. You know, our overspend was according to the club was related to Bramley Moore Dock and the Covid costs and etc etc no sporting advantage.

Forest overspend was purely on players and salaries so that would have been a sporting advantage but apparently they were they were very nice and very pleasant during the during the appeal process although whatever it was you know they were under investigation and so their six was made just down to four and yeah I’ve just been reading about half an hour ago that Lester apparently yeah under the investigation as well.

Well, for their last year in the Premier League, where they always spent and they could start next season, I mean, their odds-on to be promoted this season back to the Premier League from the Championship.

George: They’re currently second in the table behind Leeds. They had a 12 point lead at one point. They did have a 12 point lead, but let’s just say, you know, it would take something, it would take them not to make the playoffs now at least.
Andy: Let’s assume, well, actually irrespective of what I’ve just been reading, irrespective of whether they get promoted or not, they could start next season with a negative points situation, because of overspend two years ago when they were last in the Premier League.

I mean, it’s getting out of hand now, you know, how many more teams are hurriedly checking the books to make sure that they haven’t won? I read an article about Forest and about their Chairman and things.

George: And one of these little gripes was that Chelsea spent a million, a billion or something in the same time frame. But the article said it was Barney Roaney and the Guardian, he said they found a loophole. What was the loophole they found?

Paul: So what they did, and it goes back several years, actually, George, to one of your favourite words in the early days of TtB, it goes back to the treatment of amortisation.

George: I knew it would be that, go on.

Paul: I mean, it’s hung there like a ghoul behind you for years and years and it’s come back. So what Chelsea quite cleverly worked out was let’s say a player costs £100 million, just for argument’s sake, keep it very simple, and if you give the player a four -year contract, the amortisation of that £100 million means it costs you £25 million a year, because it’s £100 divided by four.

But if you give the player an eight -year contract, it’s £100 divided by eight, which means that the amortisation cost on an annual basis is only £12 .5 million. So this is effectively what they did.

They put everybody out on really long contracts. They’re never going to keep the players for that period of time because they’re going to sell the player at some point in the future, and it reduced their amortisation cost, which brought them back in line with the profitability and sustainability rules.

George: And has that loophole been closed?

Paul: It is now being closed because the Premier League, and in fact, I think FIFA, I’d have to go and check. But I think UEFA as well have all said, well, no, hang on a minute. You can’t do that. The maximum, I think, from memory, now is five years. So even if you offer somebody an eight year contract, we’re going to look at it from an accounting point of view as if it’s a five year contract.

So they’ve reduced the ability for clubs to do what Chelsea did. That’s what happens when you can afford to pay the best lawyers and the best accountants in the country.

George: That’s what everybody’s saying about City, isn’t it?

Paul: Money is no object to these guys, and therefore you pay for the best advice. And that best advice gives you some form of advantage until the regulator catches up with you. And it’s the same in any regulated business around the world.
It doesn’t matter what it is, financial services, anything. The top operators are always years ahead of the regulators, and the regulators are always playing catch up. And it’s now the same in football.

George: And the government’s about to introduce the bill that will give the Premier League a regulator, aren’t they?

Paul: Well, an independent regulator, which will be known as IREF. I know. Probably somebody was paid a fortune to come up with that name, but there you go.

Yes, so the legislation had its first reading yesterday. And they say, we’ll actually go through the House of Commons, through the House of Lords, back to the House of Commons. before the general election, so sometime in the next few months.
George: And are you confident, Paul, that it will provide the kind of powers that you think it should do?

Paul: No, I’m not, to be honest, and I think it’s actually a major disappointment because it doesn’t take into account we’ve got these profitability and sustainability rules. I think there are some elements of it that are good. I’m not saying it’s all bad, but it just doesn’t go far enough. So the financial regulations will still remain with the Premier League.

So the Premier League can, in fact, create whatever financial regulation it wants to do. And indeed, next year, we leave the existing regulations and we go to different regulations next year, which is bonkers, really, if you’re going to have a regulator, give the regulator all of the powers, don’t just give them some of the powers, of course, because it doesn’t work otherwise.
And yeah, I mean, I’ve been busy doing things, but I’ve been thinking that there needs somebody to come up with a sort of a manifesto for football, that says, we’re going to do the following things, and just, just simplify the whole running of the game.

And take the control away from those people that have got other interests in the game. So the Premier League’s primary interest is actually selling the rights of Premier League football, both in the UK and around the world.

Yeah, just let it do that. Let it promote the Premier League around the world. That’s what it’s good at. And allow everybody else, allow somebody else, the independent regulator, to look after the regulation of football, and maybe even have a third part of the organization that looks after the administration of football.

So you separate all of the functions and you give the functions to the people who are best capable, best able to run it.
I would even go one stage further. And at the moment, the Premier League is owned by whoever the 20 members of the Premier League are at any one stage.

I would remove that. And I would say to everybody who’s been a member of the Premier League, and there’s a calculation that you can make as to what percentage of time that the Premier League has been in existence, have you been a member of it.

So Everton in this case, because we’ve never been out of the Premier League, we’ve been a member for 100% of the time. A club that’s only been in there for one season has been a member for 3%. I would actually sell off the Premier League to investors that are not football clubs.

So private equity guys, bankers, other investors, whoever they might be. And it would do two things. It would separate the Premier League from the clubs.

George: So the clubs just become members.

Andy: Yeah, participants.

Paul: So they have a license to play in the Premier League. And the ownership of the Premier League sits somewhere else. And the clubs get in return, the clubs get a lump of cash now.

So, you know, the Premier League generates about five and a half billion pounds a year in income. Let’s say three times that so it’s worth 16 billion pounds, the Premier League. You work out what everybody’s share of that is. And it’s not just the 20 members who are in the Premier League now, but it’s everybody else.

It’s the 45 or whatever the figure is. Clubs have been in the Premier League over its time, and you calculate how long they’ve been in the Premier League, and they get a percentage based on that. Everybody gets a nice little windfall, but the Premier League itself then is run.

And then the Premier League is run by a totally separate organization, has a totally separate administrator, has a totally separate regulator, and it just leaves the football clubs with the responsibility of playing football, sorting out their own commercial arrangements.

And it just simplifies the whole thing. So there’s not this confusion.

Andy: Well, if you do that to Nottingham Forest, they get a competitive advantage. If you do that to Everton, Everton gets a disadvantage.

Paul: And they’re all arguing amongst themselves, which is what the current situation is as to who has the biggest advantage or who has the least advantage. Just remove all of that. Allow the football clubs to run like football clubs.
They do whatever they want in terms of obviously, there has to be financial regulation. And that would be they can only spend a certain percentage of whatever income they generate going forwards. But they just concentrate on being football clubs.

So they buy and sell players, they train players, they develop players, they develop tactics, they have a management team, etc, etc. And that’s all that they do. And the Premier League runs itself and sells itself around the world to whoever it wants to sell it to.

And that to me, with a proper independent regulator sitting on top of all of that, would solve many, many of the problems of the Premier League going forwards. It doesn’t solve the immediate problem that we’ve got this moment in time.

And in fact, a couple hours ago, I tweeted that such other difficulties that the Premier League face at this moment, in time that we should just, they should announce a moratorium on all of these regulatory issues that are going, you know, so Nottingham Forest, Everton, it would include, have to include Chelsea and Manchester City and some people would say well that’s grossly unfair but that’s what happens when you have a moratorium.

It’s fair on some people, it’s not fair on others and just say the system that we have, okay we’re changing the system and it will be a different regulatory system next season but the system that we’ve got now isn’t working. Iit isn’t fair, there isn’t actually an easy way of making it fair, so what we’re going to do is we’re just going to say that we understand that some people have abused the system, some people therefore have gained an advantage but the regulations that we’ve got and the penalties that we’ve got actually damage the Premier League more than the advantages and disadvantages that the clubs themselves have got through their actions.

Therefore, we’re going to play out the rest of this season as if nothing has happened. There will be no points deductions. Everybody just plays the game and they get whatever points their performances deserve.

So if you win 10 games, you get 30 points for those 10 games and you draw six, there’s 36 points. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, that’s what we’re going to do because the regulations as they are don’t work and the Premier League and the clubs are being and the fans, as a result are currently being unfairly treated as a result of poor regulation and has to be said, you know, very poor management.

Richard Scudamore, the guy who’s largely responsible for the success of the Premier League. I was thinking about this the other day. Sorry, I’m going on a bit of a speech. I think he did very much what Sir Alex Ferguson did at Manchester United.
He built something that was enormously successful, but there is no succession plan. And as what happened with Manchester United when Sir Alex Ferguson left, the club largely fell apart. And what’s happened with the Premier League is since Richard Scudamore left, the Premier League has fallen apart because there wasn’t a succession plan.

And, you know, as we spoke about many weeks ago, Richard Masters was the fourth choice of four in terms of being the CEO. Now, people might say, well, it’s unfair just to blame him. But, you know, the fact is, is that he’s the CEO and he earns close on two million pounds a year for being the CEO of the Premier League.

And if he’s not capable of doing the job, he shouldn’t be in the job in the first instance. But there needs to be a radical reform of the whole structure of the Premier League, of its regulation, ownership of the Premier League, and how football clubs operate in the future.

George: And can this government appointed regulator do that?

Paul: No, because they’re probably not on the basis of what I’ve only briefly read the white paper, probably not that there’s certain elements of that they can do.

But they would have to. It would be a radical change from what they’ve proposed. I mean, this is my view, you know, I’ve not expressed these views to anybody else. So, you know, this is a, and it’s not properly thought through by any stretch, but it’s just sort of developing a line of thinking and saying the Premier League has got itself into such an awful mess and football as a result will get itself into an awful mess, that we have to do something radical.

And if you think about, for example, the problems between the Premier League and the EFL, in the sense that the Premier League can’t agree what it should give the EFL or how it should help the EFL from the massive resources that the Premier League have.

One of the reasons for that is that the clubs are saying, well, if the new proposals are going to cost us £8 million a year, that makes our job as a football club more difficult because of the way the regulations are at this moment in time where, frankly, if we can save £8 million, it means that we can spend that £8 million on players rather than give it to the football league.
But the fact is that the football league can’t operate without that funding. Or if it does, the gap between the football league and in particular the Championship and the Premier League is such that you get all these difficulties, which you described a few minutes ago, Andy, you know, when unless the club goes up or comes down and then goes back up again, can’t possibly compete.

They can’t compete in the Championship because the Championship regulations are different to the Premier League regulations. And if they happen to come back up and they’ve overspent before they went down, then they’re penalised again.

The whole thing just doesn’t work. So you either extend the Premier League and you have a Premier League One and a Premier League Two to include the championship, but then that just pushes the problem down to Division one, Division two, or you change the whole ownership and regulatory structure.

This is off the back of a couple of hours of thinking, what I think should happen.

But what we’ve got here is the Government saying, well, something needs to happen. And this is our first stab at it. And for a first stab, it’s not too bad. It’s better than what we’ve got currently. But an awful lot of work needs to be done on it going forwards.

George: Or, as my friend Andrew, one of our blue brethren up in Glasgow, wrote to me, the best outcome possible is that this is an enormous cluster **** and gets rid of the PL once and for all, and we go back to the four league system all overseen by the FA.

That’s not going to happen either, is it?

Paul: There’s a lot of sense in that. to say why do we have a Premier League and a separate football league? Why aren’t the four divisions? And you know you can even make it bigger than that if you wanted five divisions and why aren’t they all operating together?

And you know at the end of the day it’s greed. It’s just going to say it’s greed. We know exactly why they won’t operate together because there’s certain clubs who don’t want anything to do with other clubs.

George: Everything we’ll be talking about for the next two years will be governed by the fact that the really greedy ones won’t give up shit. Not at all.

Paul: No. I think that’s true George, the only way around that is you create regulations and you create a system which allows them to give up some of the competitive advantage.

Andy: Well it must, you know, I don’t know, I always think because we’re fans you think like a fan and it’s it’s it’s banal nowadays but what used to happen when I when I first started watching football and the Premier League has changed all this you get to the start of the and that was what was exciting about it.

Yeah that’s done now Blackburn, Rovers and Leicester and I can’t think of any others you know the real buzz of this season has been Aston Villa. How they’ve stuck it in there and you know but that kind of oh I wonder what’s going to happen that’s no part of professional football in Great Britain in the Premiership at all.

Andy: We all know what’s going to happen and I don’t see the theatre in that at all and I don’t see the fairness in it because you know there are 20 clubs. in that division, and only three or four sets of supporters have got any genuine hope of silverware.

It’s just, I don’t, I just don’t get it. It’s just, well, it’s not sport, is it? It’s business. And it’s just a recession, isn’t it? Well, people are marking their own homework. They’ve made their own rules.

They’ve got stinking rich on it. They could do what they want. They can cherry pick every other, you know, I mean, we’re all as ever, Tony, as a waiting for brand sweat to be cherry picked. And I suspect that fans at Villa as well are expecting some of their squad to be cherry picked as well, because if they’re close to the wire on profit and sustainability rules, as has been really good, they might have to sell someone to balance the books.

Now, you know, they’re going to be, they’re going to be delighted, aren’t they, if they have to sell Ollie Watkins. you know, or somebody else, it doesn’t matter who it is, if they’ll have to raise some money to balance the books, then that hanging into that top four, as you just mentioned, goes out the window.

Paul: It’s so bonkers, isn’t it, Andy? Because in that set of circumstances, who on earth can Aston Villa sell Ollie Watkins to? Yeah, the three clubs above them. Yeah, so you have to sell your best player to your competitors in order to remain in business.

Andy: I hope that you get a fair price and you don’t get shafted. Well, yeah, I mean, that was nothing in Forest’s argument, wasn’t it, in terms of… Yeah, they refused to sell Johnson, Brennan Johnson, until they got the price they wanted, whereas the situation with ourselves and Richarlison was somewhat different.

We had a limited, a very limited time frame to get it done, so we had to take more or less what we could, and we got 50 million for a player who was worth considerably more than that.

Paul: If indeed we got 50 million.

Andy: Pardon? If indeed we got 50 million. If indeed we got 50 million, but every man and his dog who watches football knows that at the time, even in these ridiculous priced times, that Richarlison was worth more than we got for him.
But needs must. We had to sell to balance the books. Tottenham got a top player. We got a decent price, but not the price ideally we’d have wanted. You’ve just mentioned, how long is it before somebody comes and tries to cherry pick Branthwaite away?

10 minutes.

Yeah, exactly. He only has to make his debut for England in a couple of weeks and have an half -decent game, and the cheque books will be out. Whilst Everton may or may not get a decent price for him, it won’t be what it would be worth to us over time.

Paul: Where’s the incentive for football clubs to invest and develop young players, if at some point in the future they’re going to have to sell them in order to stay in business?

George: I think, doesn’t the majority of them, is there 92 clubs in the Football League?

That’s exactly how they all operate. And then there’s half a dozen that go, oh, we’ll have him, we’ll pick him, we’ll get him, buy him. Surely, you know, Grimsby Town operate on exactly that process, that we will make players and sell them continuously, because we can’t keep them, because you can’t.

Paul: And to a degree, if you’re like a second or third division club, with the greatest respect to those clubs, there’s a degree of sense in that, isn’t that? Where it doesn’t become sensible is where the clubs that are operating in the same division or the same league, in the case of the Premier League, are having to sell to the direct competitors.

If Grimsby Town, for argument’s sake, sell a player to Leeds, there’s no sort of transfer of competitive advantage from one to the other, because they don’t compete with each other. That happens to be professional football clubs, but they don’t compete in the same division.

Grimsby hopefully get a fair price for the player, and Leeds get a player that they want and develop further. For me, the biggest problem is when somebody like Aston Villa, to use Aston Villa as an example, or indeed Everton, if we sell Branthwaite to Manchester City, for example, whereby we’re having to do so for business reasons, but we’re reducing our competitiveness and increasing the competitiveness of the other club.

Andy: We’re widening the gap. We’re just widening the gap, yeah. How would you regulate against that? No sales into your division. I don’t know, you would only sell into Europe, and Europe’s not competitive with the kind of wages that are being paid in this country.

I think you have to change the whole.

Paul: Absolutely, you have to change the whole regulatory system, which is, you know, we’re sort of moving in that direction. And it’s not, it’s, I don’t think it’s what’s being proposed, which is effectively saying, you know, in the first instance, you can spend 85% of your turnover on wages and amortization, and that will drop down to 70% in three years time.

Because that just gives us the biggest clubs, you know, the greatest advantage. But there has to be, and I’ve not fully worked it out, and I don’t think anybody has yet. There has to be a system that says, okay, if you are a bigger club, it’s unfair for you not to be able to spend more money than a smaller club.

I mean, that just makes common sense. But there has to be some form of mechanism that says Thank you. uh just because you’re three times bigger doesn’t mean that you can spend three times as much it means that you know there has to be a sort of a narrowing of the competitive gap between the two and you can’t do that by transferring revenues from one club to another but you can do it by saying that you know the club that has like the lowest wage bill um rather the club that has the highest wage bill can’t spend more than the club and more than twice the the wages of the club that has the lowest wage bill
George: Just just as an example yeah to try and close the gap between the top and the bottom so you reduce that competitive gap but you would think since the since the rules of the Premier League are made by the member clubs you you this is the bit I don’t understand them you know if you look at it in any sort of way at all 15 of those 20 clubs would totally agree with what you’ve just said why have they not gathered some muscle together and gone oi let’s just uh sort this out can we because you’re just striding away from us?

Paul: Because they’re all stupid like Farhad and believe that one day they’ll be one of the big six;

George: Are you serious delusions of grandeur?

Paul: well why because Farhad Moshiri thought that he could make us one of one of the big six and he spent as if we were one of the big six and then…

George: um I’m just gonna I’m not going to disagree with that but i am going to qualify and it’s a bit mean, but i thought about this today Farhad Moshiri sold the club, bought the club from Bill Kenwright and allowed him to stay. he then gave Kenwright the purse strings and when you come to write the blame of the last seven years although I think possibly the majority of it goes to Moshiri.

It’s not all him. It’s his decision that he gave it to such an incompetent and I don’t like to slag off the dead, but I think we need to get it straight that this is not all entirely him. It’s entirely to do with the fact that he didn’t replace somebody who couldn’t do the job and who ran around like a kid in a sweet shop.

Andy: I don’t think that’s unfair at all George. I think they were both running around like kids in a sweet shop. They were but you know I mean I’m not trying to white wash because the whole thing is just but because Bill has died and blessings on his soul and all that we’re all kind of going oh it’s all Moshiri’s fault.

Paul: Well it wasn’t all Moshiri’s fault. Bill takes a great deal of the blame for where we’re at. No I can recall in 2017 speaking to one particular agent who said he gets three or four phone calls from Everton football club about the same player and when he asks, not one of the three or four people, (and we can name who the three and four people are), have ever spoken to each other about that player?

Andy: The left hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing.

Paul: You get Farhad Moshiri , phoning up, you get Bill Kenwright, you get Steve Walsh and you get, what’s his name, Joorabachian phoning up, and they’re all proposing to represent Everton and they’re all saying, yeah, we’ve got an interest in, you know, XYZ player, which is why when they come to Everton, first of all, we pay much more than market value.
And certainly, you know, if you go back and look at all of the contracts that were signed in the 2017 -18 era, just ridiculous wages, some of which we’re still paying today. You know, Gomes, you know, with the greatest respect to him, on a wage that bears no relation to his value to the football club.

Andy: Mismanagement is ridiculous, isn’t it?

George: Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that we start by talking about the mismanagement and the miscalculation of the Premier League, and now we come down to a club that we feel has been victimised by them, but we’re no better than that, you know, that both organisations are in want of huge overhaul.

Which brings us to the $74 ,000 question. Where are we at with 777?

Paul: Before we get to 777, George, if you don’t mind, I’m going to finish off my little manifesto.

George: Go ahead.

Paul: One of the many problems is transfer business and when transfer business happens and we ‘ve got to this system where we have two transfer windows, one in January and one that starts after the season finishes and ends sometime in August.

I think that needs to be radically looked at as well. So, you know, what we’re all talking about here in terms of having to sell players at the end of the financial year in order to meet our financial obligations or regulatory obligations.

Why don’t we? but then the year end happens halfway through the summer transfer window. So the year end is the end of June but the transfer window is already open. It seems to me like perfectly logical that you line up the transfer window with the beginning of a new financial year, you don’t have to transfer window running half in one year and half in the next year, which is what allows you to sell out, you know, flip flop players, or the get out of jail card, which is, for example, Richarlison sorry, where you end up selling on the last day of the financial year, but it happens to be in the middle of the transfer window.

So, align the transfer window with the year ends. So you can’t sell anybody before the year end, but you sell somebody into the following financial year. So the end of the financial year for almost all clubs is the 30th of June, because that’s when player’s contracts’

So, the transfer window opens on the 1st of July, it closes a week before the season starts. So you have to sort of try and regulate all the clubs across Europe so that they have a similar start date. So, you know, the second week of August, so the transfer window closes in the first week of August, or even at the end of July. So you have a much smaller transfer window. But it’s not impacted then by, you know, a change in the financial year or the fact that you’ve actually started playing and then you buy players towards the end of the window, but you’ve already played six or seven games, which doesn’t make any sense.

George: Sorry, Paul, I’m just making me think about this. Why do we have these transfer windows? What was so awful about what happened when we all started watching football? When clubs wanted to buy somebody and could, they did.
What was wrong with that? what’s the advantage of these transfer windows?

Paul: Funny enough, though, there always has been a, in a sense, a transfer. window because even going back in the 60s and 70s there was a cutoff date in a season whereby you couldn’t sign anybody from that cutoff date.

George: I wouldn’t know off the top of my head what the date was. Right, to gain an advantage you mean?

Paul: Yeah so that you know a club that faced relegation didn’t suddenly buy 10 players with six games to go.

Andy: And City bought Rodney Marsh to win the championship. Yes exactly so I think that was the logic of the transfer window. Right.

Paul: The other point I would make about transfer windows is the January window.

Scrap the idea that you can buy and sell players in January but allow clubs to either loan in or loan out a fixed number of players. So you don’t have to do it. but there’s a limit on the number of players that you can loan in, and there’s a limit on the number of players that you can loan out.

And that loan goes from whatever the date in January is to the end of the season, or to the end of the financial year, sorry, 30th of June. And that’s the extent of the loan. It doesn’t go any further than that.

You can have an option that says, and then on the 30th of June, we’re gonna buy that player, and that’s fine because you then buy that player in the next financial year. But the loan itself only exists for the period, what would it be, 1st of January to the 31st of January, which is the window.

That’s just a loan-only window, and every club is limited to, say, three players in and three players out. So you’re simplifying matters, and you’re forcing clubs to actually regulate themselves and not react and use the transfer window to cover up the mistakes that they’ve made elsewhere.

Andy: Well, that was always Malcolm Allison’s argument about stopping transfers. Find out who can actually coach.

George: Yeah, exactly. Make the academies work. You could make a case out, couldn’t you, that you may not, Alex Ferguson floated it once.

You can’t have a football team playing for Manchester United unless half the team comes from Manchester. Now, it got nowhere, and it couldn’t possibly be further from that now, but the logic of what he’s talking about, of what he was talking about, makes complete sense. That you must nurture the girls and boys of the country you’re in, and not just escape by buying big in Europe. But we’re miles from that. It’s just cloud cookie land, sorry.

Paul: It’s a fair point. I mean, all the lawyers that are listening to this and all the barrack room lawyers would turn around immediately and say, well, you can’t do that under employment legislation.

But that’s not to say the system couldn’t be created where a number of players have to be so-called homegrown.

George: Well, surely to God, that’s exactly what happens right with the Doncaster Blues. I, you know, surely most of those players are local, aren’t they? Because they have to be because they can’t have a big scouting system. They haven’t got any money. I don’t know why I’m pushing this part at all. Sorry.

Paul: No, I mean, look, I think what we’re, what the three of us are saying, and I’d be amazed if there’s any fan listening to this who disagrees, is that the whole structure of football just doesn’t work properly.

And all it does is feed the inequities of football, the lack of balance that exists in football these days. And that goes from transfers to commercial arrangements to the amount of influence that you have in the Premier League, big clubs and small clubs, as Richard Masters said.

It goes to what extent they have an influence in Europe, such as the European Clubs Association, what influence do they have in UEFA. The whole thing is structured and has been allowed to be structured in a way which just gives the biggest clubs more and more advantage as time goes on.

And like in business elsewhere, it shouldn’t be like that. It should be about the best run clubs are the clubs that have got the competitive advantage, not just the clubs with the most money. So I know that sounds a bit libertarian but…

George: There’s something wrong with being libertarian, Paul.

Paul: That’s talking the politics and we can do that podcast.

George: Subject before you can get to 777. Give me your two minutes on that boy from Arsenal who’s turned Southgate down. And where’s that leading us to? Ben White, isn’t it? Give us some background, bro. I’m not aware of this. I think this is Ben White who’s a right back for Arsenal and also he can play centre half. And Southgate wanted to pick him for England and he said, no, I don’t want to play for England.

No, I’m staying with the club. I’m not interested in that at all. Well, he’s not going to play for another country, he’s just decided to blank international football. Yeah. And, you know, one way or another, how many times was Paul Scholes injured when he was called up for England?

Because, you know, the club, you know, I can see this from a club’s point of view, England needs to play friendly because you’ve got to get the team to go, so they play friendly and he breaks his leg.

Where’s the fun in that? I’m just curious, you know, I read quite a detailed article on it and you sort of think, well, fair play, you know, it’s his joy, it’s his career, it’s his life. What does it mean to, in this day and age, to be picked for England?

Andy: Does it mean less than it certainly did? You know, it was always the peak of a career, wasn’t it? To become an international. But clearly that boy doesn’t think it is, and he’s not alone. I’m sure he’s not alone.

Well, I mean, turn it round for the fans. How many fans, you know, when the international managers name their squads for these various friendlies or tournaments or whatever, you know, there are fans of every club of every player selected who immediately post on forums and social media, please X don’t come back injured.

Don’t get poached by some, don’t have somebody blowing in your ear hole from another club while you’re in England or Scotland or Wales or whatever country’s dressing room. And you’ve got somebody blowing in your ear hole saying the grass is so much greener down my road, pal.

Andy: Yeah, of course. Well, you can’t help that happening. They could do that anyway. But no, I know. But that’s what I’m saying from the fans perspective. I know speaking personally, you know, if ever any Everton players get selected for international duty, then that’s a recognition that they’re performing to an acceptable level for that international manager.
But quite honestly, as we pay his wages, we want him to play 38 games a season, plus hopefully half a dozen in the cups. And if he goes up, you know, if he has, if he starts the season, well, plays four to five games, then goes off to England or wherever, wherever and gets injured.

We stand to suffer because we’ve lost that player for six months to an injury. But before I mean, I’ll name the colours to the last one before country. I’m not really bothered about international football. If England won the World Cup, great. If they don’t win the World Cup, not really bothered. I just want I just want my players, you know, Everton players. And if I was, I’d want United players, and if I was a Liverpool fan, I’d want Liverpool players to come back without any injury and not, you know, not overly tired because they’ve got to go straight back into the Premier League or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, go on, Paul. No, sorry. No, no, I was only going to say, are we going to end up with the cricket situation whereby you have an international bunch of players who are on contracts?

Paul: Yeah, central contracts, yeah.

Well, what I was going to argue was the opposite of that. I mean, look at Branthwaite’s reaction to getting something, you know, called up for England. Absolutely delighted because it’s part of his career progression.

He was always going to be an England player. It was just a matter of when. Yeah. But also, you know, being absolutely blunt about it, it puts him in a shock window.

George: I don’t buy that, Paul. I think the boys have been in the shop window all the time.

I think they’re all watching everybody all the time and everybody knows how good he is.

Paul: Clearly, because everything is on television and they monitor every player and all the statistics are available.
Everybody knows everything about that kid. When I say shop window, it’s just another mark of his progression. Yeah. Going back to where we were before about the fact that the Premier League, particularly, is absolutely no marker for…

Andy: It’s nothing like a level playing field, nothing like it. The conversation to Branthwaite, who signed a long contract with Everton, goes, you know, do you want to play against Real Madrid? Do you want to test yourself at the best level?

And who are Everton, really, who are we as his fans and his supporters to say, no, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t go to Man United. You shouldn’t go to Man City. I couldn’t in all conscience. But what pains me is that when I started watching football, there was like 20 clubs who thought, no, we can get into Europe this year. We’ll play Real Madrid. Don’t you go potting off down the road. We’re doing, you know, but it’s all gone. And I can see, you know, I can see who’s happy about that. But I can see so many more people who, you know, I mean, if you like, just pick a club.

Wolves, there’s no chance of them winning anything. They’re not going to win the league. They’re not going to win the cup. They’re not, you know, all roads lead to Etihad and you get beat. I just, I don’t understand.

George: Well, I do understand this. It’s greed, isn’t it? And it’s winning. And making a bollocks of it along the way too. Yeah, that’s a perfect summation. It feels like it. Go on, let’s get to the really grim stuff.

Where are we now? Are we not at a point where the Premier League are going to go, we’re going to have to give this club to these cowboys in America? Because if not, they’re going straight into administration and out of the league.
And the whole product is going to be besmirched.

Paul: Well, I think that’s what 777 hope, 777 hope, will be the Premier League’s attitude. The fact is, if we went into administration, we wouldn’t go out of the league straight away anyway, because we just get a nine point penalty and, you know, whether we would be relegated or not is obviously a different matter, we wouldn’t drop out of the Premier League just by virtue of going into administration.

And it’s not an absolute given that 777 are the only option in town, you know, I’ve spoken on many occasions and I’ll say it again. There are other people out there that would be prepared to buy everything and will be prepared to back everything financially, who would have no problems passing the fit and proper owners test or the directors and owners testing of his proper title.

But it needs Farhad Moshiri to move away from the notion that in his eyes, at least, 777 are the only legitimate buyers of Everton Football Club.

George: Can you get to a position where somebody in the Premier League committee who are going to decide all this gets hold of Moshiri and goes, right, son, is the option.

We’re not going to give these people the gig. Find one of these other people or the club’s gone.

Paul: Yes, but nobody’s going to do that because ultimately I think they’re scared that 777 would sue the pants off the Premier League.

All right. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Yep. Again, this comes back to, you know, they would have been right to from their point of view. Yeah. Well, except it’s a private, you know, the Premier League at the end of the day is like a private members club and private members club has the right to say these are the admission rules.

You either satisfy them or you don’t. And in your case, just in this case,777, you haven’t satisfied the rules for the following reasons. And as long as those reasons are truthful, and they’re honest and they’re legitimate, and they can be backed up by fact. What are you suing somebody for, exactly? Right. So the charge sheet against 777 reads the following, you know, you make your points about the financial performance where they get the funding from the legitimacy of their operations in different places in the world, allegedly, etc, etc, etc.

And you back it with the evidence. They’ve had 28 weeks now to look at this. So, you know, if the evidence is there, they must, they must have that evidence otherwise they would give approval. And it is, you know, this is it, guys, sorry, you’re not in.

Why is that taking so long? Because as it stands, there doesn’t appear to be a), the Premier League doesn’t seem to have the authority to say, you’re not coming in.

George: Really?

Paul: Yeah. They cannot put a time scale on it to say you either satisfy the requirements or you’re out of the picture.
Not my reading of the rules and not the reading of a number of highly qualified legal experts that I’ve spoken to. So how does the situation result? Either 777 or Farhad Moshiri has to say, this is not working.

Andy: I’m sorry, I’m not understanding this, Paul. I understood that the Premier League was going to investigate to decide whether these people were fit and proper people to be running one of their member clubs.

Paul: Correct.

George: And it was going to take 12 weeks. That was back back when Moses was in the fire brigade or something ridiculous. Young, what have they been doing? And if they had it, are you now saying they haven’t got the power to come to that decision?

Paul: They’ve got the power to grant approval. But not disapproval. They can’t say we’ve decided that we’re not going. You’re not coming into the club. That’s not allowed. There’s nothing specific in the rules that allows them to say that.
So they can keep saying to Moshiri, they can keep saying to 777 or indeed anybody else who’s in the same sort of circumstances. Right. And I’m sorry, you haven’t given us, for argument’s sake, enough financial information about. where the funds are coming from and how you know, how great are those funds going to be over the next three years? which is right what one of the conditions or you haven’t been able to provide us with audited accounts or the people that you propose to be running the club under your ownership fail to meet the standards because they got convictions somewhere, And this is all theoretical, I’m not I’m not accusing 777 of this or you know There’s financial irregularities or whatever.
There’s a whole list of things within the rules that effectively bar you from being a director.

George: They don’t have the ability to say that. What you’re actually saying is They are playing chicken with Moshiri and 777 and they are waiting because clearly after twice the amount of period of time that they said they were going to take to decide if they were fit and proper.

As you say, they’ve decided that they’re not, but they can’t do anything about it. They’re playing chicken with a football club, the owner and the prospective buyers waiting for one of them to go or give up then.

Paul: Yeah. That’s what’s happened. Yes. So, but they’re operating within the rules that they themselves have created so I’m not in any way disassociating them with any blame. They are to blame for the set of circumstances that we find ourselves in.

But I will go back to the point that ultimately, it was Farhad Moshiri’s choice. It was Farhad Moshiri who said, these are the people I’ve made the choice and I own 94 .1% of Everton Football Club. “I think these guys should own the football club going forward”. It was he that made that decision. And, you know, it probably would cost him a lot of money to walk away at this stage, but he could walk away.

Andy: Well, I mean, how much more money is this going to cost him?

Doesn’t this bring into question that if the Premier League have got the power to withhold approval for a prospective buyer to take over an available club, then shouldn’t it, shouldn’t it be written into their rules that as well as having that ability to disapprove that they should be able to set a time limit, be it 12 weeks, 15 weeks, however many weeks for any prospective purchaser to satisfy some very definite criteria. Otherwise, the deal will not proceed, period.

Pau: Yeah. Whether Party A, in this case, Farhad Moshiri, has shaken hands, literally, or, or not, with a prospective purchaser, in this case, 777.

If they, if they can, if 777, or any other prospective purchaser, of any other club for sale, cannot meet the criteria that the Premier League, or any league, sets as a minimum, then the deal is off, end of, go away.

Yeah, it should be, it should be written that any deal, any agreement between one shareholder and a future shareholder is subject to regulatory approval, and At that regulatory approval, the period of time that it takes, or the maximum period of time that it takes, is 13 weeks, 12 weeks, whatever, three months, four months, five months, whatever you want it to be.
Andy: But that has to be… That has to be a line in the sand. And when you reach the line in the sand, if the criteria haven’t been met, the deal’s off the table, and that’s it. End of. Well, you presume that this is something the Premier League are learning as we’re learning it.

And in rewriting their own regulations, I’m sure they must be going, we can’t let this happen again.

This is bonkers. I think you’re right, Andy. I think they’re going to have to draw up some sort of line in the sand thing.
Well, if there’s going to be an independent regulator for football imposed by the Government, then surely that’s going to be the first thing that he or she sorts out, is in the event of a sale or a purchase of a club, there is a minimum criteria and there’s a minimum time period or a maximum time period.

If you can’t satisfy the minimum criteria within the maximum time period on your bike, you’re out of here. Exactly. The regulations should be cast in stone. These are the criteria for joining our private members club.

Can you or can you not satisfy them? Yes, absolutely. And if you can’t, thanks for the claim, but you’re not welcome. Yeah, from the day that you signed the agreement with Moshiri you’ve got three months to satisfy the conditions.
And if at the end of the three months you haven’t satisfied them, you know, we part hopefully as good friends, but we part. Yeah. Yeah, they’re going to have to come to that because they can’t allow this situation to ever repeat itself can they, it’s farcical.

Andy: No because sooner or later sooner or later there’s going to be another club on the on the sale block
George: Of course there is Andy and they won’t want all this nonsense going on all over again and god forbid it be one of the big clubs.

Paul: Well it’s a situation that existed with Newcastle United, didn’t it take pretty much 18 months that it took for them to get approval and they you know we’re not saying anything of a libelous nature the approval was based on the government’s wishes as against the Premier League’s wishes

George: No, nothing else. No, I think that’s what I was going to say was, somebody’s cooking Toulouse sausage and mashed potato and broccoli for me. How long have we been talking for?

Paul: Slightly more than an hour.

George: Yeah. Okay.

Paul: You better go before your broccoli gets soft.

George: Yeah. I think so. Sorry, guys.

Paul: No, not at all, George. Not at all. It’s been a passionate and interesting conversation as always.

George: Yeah. I’m looking forward to it.

Andy: I’m sure we’ve got other stuff to talk about, so we’ll leave that to the weekend. Well, no. Or Seamus’ shirt. Yeah. We’ll leave that to the weekend.

Paul: Let alone the idea that we’re going to talk about our favorite players through the years.

George: No chance. No chance. This is too serious. This is the whole thing unwinding. And, you know, we’re the one with the springs coming out.

Paul: Yeah. No, you’re right. George, are you going to get your Toulouse sausage?

George: Thanks very much. I’ll tell you how good her gravy is.

Paul: You’re making me hungry,

George. Yeah, come on. Come dine with George.

Okay, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you to everybody for listening. And, as always, thanks for your great feedback.
And I’m glad that everybody seems to be enjoying the transcripts as well. So good stuff.

Paul, George and Andy: Thank you. Bye -bye. Bye.