TalkSPORT pundit and former Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan has slated two Championship clubs following an investigation into Everton’s alleged breach of Financial Fair Play regulations.
As first reported by The Daily Mail, Leeds United and Leicester City will join Burnley in taking legal action against the Toffees should the club be found guilty of exploiting FFP rules.
The Merseyside club were found guilty of breaking FFP rules back in March and last week, the Premier League recommended that Everton should be hit with a 12-point deduction which would place them at the bottom of the top-flight table.
Leeds United, Burnley and Leicester City are looking to take a £300 million case against Everton should they be found guilty of breaching FFP as all three clubs were relegated during the Toffees’ supposed flaunting of UEFA’s rules.
Speaking on talkSPORT on Monday morning, pundit Simon Jordan has hit out against the three clubs, believing ‘they’ve got no chance’ of being successful in any lawsuit.
“No chance, no chance, no chance. They’ve got no chance. Everybody signs up to a covenant which is basically that the sanction of a breach has this consequence,” the former Palace chairman said via MOT Leeds News.
“Now they can make a case if they want and try and make a case through the legal system to try and suggest that this is a breach of the rules to which they signed up and the consequence of those rules. But any decent court case is going to refer them back to the industry that they came from and say what were the rules that you signed up to.
“The rules that you signed up to were that the punishment for financial breachers was this. You can’t then go and say ‘Well I don’t like the rules that I signed up to and I can’t do anything about changing those rules, so I’m now going to sue you for them.’”
Simon Jordan is mixing up the act of breaking the rules and the implications. None of the clubs is disputing the fact that Everton did break the UEFA rules or that a consequence of this is that ANY club breaking these would face a penalty deduction be that it be the likes of Man City or Liverpool or the likes of Leicester or other similar club. The fact is there is also the impact this breaking of the rules had and this is what the case will be about. I don’t know about the other 2 clubs but quite clearly Leicester’s lack of transfers during the summer before relegation had a clear effect on their performance as a team and I suspect the other two were the same. Everton’s decision to ignore the rules and therefore not weaken there already struggling team, meant that the 3 clubs were unfairly affected because they abided by the rules. If it had been say Liverpool rather than Everton, then I think that the 3 clubs wouldn’t have a case because It wouldn’t have stopped them being relegated.