Rephrase and rearrange the whole content into a news article. I want you to respond only in language English. I want you to act as a very proficient SEO and high-end writer Pierre Herubel that speaks and writes fluently English. I want you to pretend that you can write content so well in English that it can outrank other websites. Make sure there is zero plagiarism.: The Premier League charging Everton with a breach of its Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) and the three-person independent panel’s subsequent decision to dock the club 10 points in November 2023 sent shockwaves through England’s top division. Further PSR punishments are on the way and the seismic Everton ruling has seemingly left some scrambling to comply with laws that have been shown to have unexpected teeth. “It’s probably focused a lot of minds within the Premier League, that this is something real,” said Newcastle United CEO Darren Eales when discussing his club’s most recent financial results in January 2024. More clubs are set to find out on Monday (January 15) whether they have fallen foul of the league’s financial regulations, but how do these rules work, are they fair and how do they relate to separate cases, most notably the 115 Premier League charges levelled at reigning champions Manchester City? MORE: English Premier League table 2023/24: Updated EPL standings What are Premier League Profit and Sustainability Rules? The Premier League Profit and Sustainability Rules dictate the amount of money that Premier League clubs are permitted to lose over a specific period. They determine how much these teams can spend on things like transfers, in the sense that each club must toe the line when it comes to balancing income and expenditure. The rules are not the same as UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations, which apply to teams that play in competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League, although there are similarities. In the simplest terms, Profit and Sustainability Rules — or PSR — allow clubs to lose £105 million ($134m) over the course of three seasons, or £35m per season, on a rolling basis. This is on the proviso that £90m is covered by secure funding from owners, such as buying up more shares instead of giving their clubs a loan. The three-year losses allowed without such guarantees are £15m. These calculations do not include spending on a variety of exempt categories, such as youth development and infrastructure projects. Additionally, after the 2019/20 and 2020/21 seasons were heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the Premier League made allowances for clubs to write off losses suffered as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. If clubs without secure funding exceed the £15m parameter, they can have their budgets limited and transfers restricted by the league in order to bring their finances back into line. However, the reason for the fixation on the £105m figure is that this is the amount, the big red line, that applies to most clubs. Go beyond this, and you end up being referred to an independent commission to be faced with more severe punishments, as was the case with Everton. In their representations to the Premier League, Everton accepted they had exceeded the PSR threshold but cited the cost of interest on loans taken out for the development of their new Bramley-Moore Dock stadium, COVID-19 costs, and the impact of lost sponsorship revenue when oligarch Alisher Usmanov — an ally of their then-owner Farhad Moshiri — was sanctioned following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Ultimately, Everton were unable to make these arguments stick sufficiently and the independent commission found in favour of the Premier League’s assertion that the Merseyside club’s losses for the three-year period up until 2021/22 tallied at £124.5m — £19.5m beyond the PSR threshold. Everton have lodged a formal appeal against their 10-point deduction, which will be heard and concluded by the end of this season. However, their legal team looks set to have even more on their plate. MORE: Everton’s Premier League points deduction explained Which clubs have been charged with PSR breaches? In order to tighten up the timeframe around these rules and to avoid cases spanning multiple seasons — Everton were initially charged last March — the latest guidelines stated clubs had to submit their 2022/23 accounts by December 31. Any breaches and charges will be confirmed by January 15. Those teams affected will then go through the process currently being undertaken by Everton and appeals must be concluded by May 24. This season, that is five days after the final round of Premier League fixtures. There has been speculation over whether various clubs might fall foul of PSR this season. On January 14, The Athletic reported Nottingham Forest and — once again — Everton would be referred to an independent commission for possible breaches. The report states that both clubs “are expected to robustly argue their case”. Forest’s permitted losses are at lower level of £61m, since they only returned to the Premier League last season. That top-flight campaign has an allowance of £35m, with £13m for the two prior in the Championship. Under owner Evangelos Marinakis, Forest have spent heavily since promotion: an outlay of around £250m saw a staggering 30 players acquired during their first season back alone. As detailed by The Athletic, Forest securing the £47.5m sale of Wales winger Brennan Johnson to Tottenham after the accounting cut-off is likely to be a factor they offer in mitigation. A loose outline of the theory is that if Forest had sold Johnson earlier for less money they’d have passed PSR, which doesn’t feel like a tremendous advert for sustainability. On the other hand, deadlines for accounts and transfers have to be drawn somewhere and the sheer scale of Forest’s outlay means that, instinctively, their case feels tricky to argue. The three-year rolling nature of the assessment period meant Everton were always likely to be vulnerable after failing last time. In terms of the potential Pandora’s Box of litigation this new era of more robust financial regulation in the Premier League might bring about, it is perhaps significant that the final season in the period under review is 2022/23, when Everton avoided relegation by two points on the final day of the season. Premier League PSR breaches: What about Man City? In a move about as subtle as some of Jordan Pickford’s instructions to his defenders, Everton included the following line in their statement reacting to the 10-point deduction. “The club will also monitor with great interest the decisions made in any other cases concerning the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules.” Manchester City. They’re talking about Manchester City. In February last year, the Premier League charged its reigning champions with over 100 breaches of competition rules. The bulk of these relate to allegations that City did not provide accurate financial information to the Premier League between 2009 and 2018. In the simplest terms, it makes this case far more complicated and far more serious than the others discussed, before we even consider the much longer period being examined. No one is questioning the veracity of Forest or Everton’s accounts. The losses declared on their books are accepted by all parties. Where the Premier League and independent commissions rule in such cases is down to whether those losses are acceptable under PSR or not. City have never failed PSR on the basic three-year rolling assessment periods. However, the allegation is that the numbers they provided to pass PSR are effectively fraudulent. As such, alleged breaches of PSR from 2015/16 to 2017/18 inclusive are included on City’s Premier League charge sheet. If all of this sounds familiar it’s because City have been tried by UEFA on some of the very same allegations, which stemmed from the investigations by whistleblower Football Leaks. A series of articles in 2018 by German publication Der Spiegel that drew upon this information prompted the UEFA and Premier League investigations into City’s financial affairs. Along with claims that full details of remuneration to former manager Roberto Mancini and a player — widely assumed to be Yaya Toure — were not accurately disclosed and amounted to off-book payments, the main allegations against City claim that sponsorship revenue from Abu Dhabi-based firms Etihad and Etisalat did not come from those sources in full and were topped up by owner Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). City were suspended from…
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