Anyone watching the Scotland vs Georgia match last night would have witnessed gold standard levels of shithousery from the Georgians. Whether it was feigning injury to an almost laughable level, time wasting , intimidating the referee or just downright unpleasantness, they pulled out the full repertoire of behaviour that are a curse on the modern game. Well done Scott McTominey for calling it out after the game.
Although not at the same level we have similar issues here in Scotland. I attended a match last weekend in the SPL where a striker was caught in the torso by a high boot in the penalty area. He then proceeded to throw himself to the ground, writhing in agony holding his head -embarrassing. Of course the VAR check showed the offending boot was nowhere near his head and no penalty given.
Last season I saw a team defending a one goal lead almost take it in turns after defending a corner to fall over feigning a head knock giving the referee no choice but to stop the game, waste time and take away any momentum the attacking team had even though everyone watching knows they’re at it.
Surely with VAR technology it must be possible to bring in a system where acts of this nature are reviewed after the game (not during as the last thing we need is more VAR delays)and say a one /two match suspension issued?
Referees get a lot of stick (sometimes rightly so) however their job is made very difficult by the pathetic behaviour of some players.
I love football but this kind of behaviour is a real blight on the game. I’m fed up with pundits calling it ‘good game management’ and don’t get me started on being ‘entitled to go down as there was contact’ .
End of rant!
Everton deducted 10 points for financial cheating. Now let’s deal with Manchester City!
And Chelsea
Given the zeal with which clubs in the lower leagues (including my own) have been pursued and penalized for financial irregularities, it’s good to see the authorities finally calling the bigger clubs into account
I don’t watch professional football for much this reason, but my lad used to play Sunday league until he turned 17. His team routinely won the “cleanest team of the season” trophy. But each year they got older, the opposing teams would cheat more – they were simply following the example set by the Prem players – and more and more and it began to take the fun of the game away.
More than once I have uttered from the sidelines “Get up, you ponce” as someone writhed on the floor in fake agony after having the ball taken off them by a clean tackle.
I wasn’t sorry when his team decided to knock it on the head mid-season. Many of them had Saturday night bar jobs by then, and Sunday mornings were often blurry.
I have to admit to feeling pretty jaded with top level football all round. Despite my own team doing pretty well right now, and despite playing as much football as ever I have I’m watching less of it than I ever have, because I find it increasingly annoying and depressing.
I’m not really bothered about low level on-pitch cheating; I’ve never really seen the difference between taking a dive and booting someone up in the air, and both have pretty much always been part of the game.
What’s doing my head in is the off-pitch stuff. We have a fit and proper persons test for ownership that it’s apparently completely impossible to fail, governing bodies we all know are bent as a nine bob note, tournaments being played in some of the most regressive states on earth, and players who’ve spent the last three years making virtue part of their personal brand sailing merrily off to do PR for fascists and murderers.
It’s not a popular view, I know, but I have very little faith in the integrity of what I’m watching at this stage. We all knew Chelsea were probably fiddling the books and making god knows what payments to god knows who. We all know full well what City have been up to. And why wouldn’t they be? The game has seen an enormous influx of cash over the last 30 years. Inevitably, it’s also seen an enormous influx of rich degenerates. It has no meaningful regulation or oversight, its governing bodies have exhibited no desire until quite recently to take a stand against the tidal wave of shady cash filling their boots, our pundits and journalists are noticeably more concerned with hyping the product than providing meaningful criticism.
When the World Cup was awarded to Qatar and Russia in 2010, the FA and numerous high profile figures in English football publicly grumbled about corruption. Then they got their heads down, stopped complaining, trooped along to the tournaments and kept their places at the trough.
I’m sorry, but that’s not what you do when you sniff corruption, because corruption is corrosive; if you tolerate it, it spreads. When Newcastle are bought by owners who claim not to be connected to the Saudi state, the league waves it through, everyone has a moan and then moves on. No checks and balances, just eventual acceptance. Same again this week when it emerges that Saudi Arabia, having been more or less handed the 2034 World Cup, have signed a lucrative multi-year sponsorship deal with FIFA.
No other industry would have tolerated so much of this garbage for so long, and it’s been tolerated because everyone is getting rich and anyone who complains about it can easily be portrayed as doing so out of partisan self-interest (“who do you support then”, always being the first question). But over time it does beg the question: how do we even know that any of this is real?
When I watch the football now, I’m watching a sport which hyper-focuses on the decisions of officials to an almost ridiculous degree (cheers VAR). It’s 80% of the post match discussion. And yet there’s precious little discussion about the clear conflict of interest in those same officials jetting off to Saudi Arabia and Qatar for lucrative refereeing assignments, or having the promise of even more lucrative permanent roles in the Kingdom dangled in front of them. In any other walk of life, you’d consider those arrangements as completely incompatible with the integrity of the endeavour. In football, they’re par for the course.
I’m not saying here the game is bent. But what I am asking is: what’s preventing it from being so, beyond the English exceptionalism that says no one in our national game would ever take a bung? Who would blow the whistle? What are the safeguards preventing it from happening? Who will intervene if it occurs – the entities that flog tournaments to the highest bidders or the entities that know that’s wrong but go along with it anyway? It’s genuinely unclear to me what is guaranteeing the integrity of the spectacle in front of me, and that realisation has sucked a lot of the joy out of proceedings.
I know we’re all meant to just repeat the catechism “best league in the world” and not think too hard about it all, but the geo-political gubbins has forced me to think about it, and the more I think the less comfortable I feel.
It annoys me when I hear pundits earnestly talking about how they stand unequivocally with players receiving hate on Twitter, then in the next breath explaining how you have to accept far worse behaviour from certain quarters because it’s part of their culture (and because they pay so well). It annoys me listening to endless discussions about net spend and “well run clubs” when it’s quite apparent that the financial information coming out of certain clubs is effectively a fiction. It annoys me listening to people tell me how their support of women’s football is inspirational for young girls, then jetting off to work for people who treat women as their personal property (at best). And it annoys me listening to people endlessly debating trivial refereeing decisions when the foundations of the sport as a whole are being corroded out from under it. And all this before we even get on to the Super League which I’m sure will come back round again in some form.
I think I just need a break at this stage. Maybe I’ll come back in a year or two and find these things bug me less. Or maybe the game has simply moved away from me and what I want from it, and is now the possession of a more global audience with a different set of tolerances. In which case, I think I’d rather walk away now and preserve the memories.
I have no idea how they’ve taken something so fundamentally beautiful and fucked it up as badly as they have, but I guess that’s cash for you. It’s as Martin Sheen memorably says in Wall Street: “That’s the thing about money. It makes you do things you don’t want to do”. At this rate, that will be football’s epitaph.
great post
Exactly how l feel, but expressed in a much better way than l could manage.
Quite … and a wonderfully written piece it is too.
The top-level is basically money focussed (and “dirty” / “dodgy” money is is in that equation, but no-one is going to admit it/investigate it/uncover it) – no longer a sport, but an investment opportunity.
Problem with that is that the “investment opportunity” is seen at lower level clubs for foreign investors, but the moment the club doesn’t stride forward, the interest is lost, the support removed and assets begin to be stripped, or the whole lot flogged off to the next hopeful with a big wallet, big hopes and no real understanding of the actual game.
But … from a sport point of view, there are still some spectacles like the recent Chelsea/Man City 4-4 game
Can’t disagree with much of that.
The irony is that the more money involved, the less the achievements. I’d have been mortified if Chelsea had won things pre-Abramwotsit, but genuinely don’t regard anything they might have won in the last twenty years with anything more than a shrug and a ‘Who cares?’ And I know other supporters I talk to feel exactly the same.
The clever money is on lower or non-league. The average I pay for a game, bearing in mind that the local women’s team is free, is about £4, and last season, the games I most enjoyed were all the cheapest.
Great post, Bingo.
I’m a long time Newcastle United fan and this post is a better observation on the corruption of the game than will ever be heard from football pundits with a vested financial interest in the game rather than the mostly emotional investment fans have traditionally had in their team.
While it’s enjoyable to see the Toon doing well with a core of homegrown and pre Saudi takeover existing players at the moment, there is definitely something morally questionable for me personally about supporting the team and therefore the regime after the Saudi takeover.
Fans don’t get a say unfortunately on who owns their team and club but when does a team no longer represent its area? I foresee already a time when this Newcastle United team will no longer be the fans’ team in many ways.
Do many Manchester City fans feel the same way while winning all the trophies, I wonder? Does the joy of winning due to having the most financial means from dubious sources become unenjoyable and therefore ultimately meaningless?
My great bugbear isn’t how the money affects a club’s own supporters, but how the relentless pursuit of the ‘champions’ league – 4th, 4th, 4th and 4th being more coveted than 5th, 5th, 1st, and 5th – has ruined the domestic cup competitions that affect Leyton Orient etc.
In 1971, Colchester United beat Leeds United 3-2, the proper Leeds United, Jack Charlton, Eddie Gray, Billy Bremner, all those guys.
A few years ago, Sutton United, a non-league team then, beat Leeds United’s reserve team. The media obviously tried to make this a big deal, but on the day of the match, Sutton were given odds of just 5/2 to do it, and that felt generous. To put that into perspective, Fulham’s chances of winning at Man. City in the league this season is unlikely to be short of about 12/1 or 14/1.
And then they have the audacity, when the F.A. Cup Final, which no one now watches, is inevitably won by one of them, to celebrate it like it’s some mighty achievement.
For me, the competition holds little interest by the time the Advent Calendar goes up, but before then it’s still great.
I recommended whole-heartedly F.A. Cup matches in August through to October/November.
Newcastle United fans would certainly enjoy winning the FA Cup or any domestic cup trophy in our lifetimes.
Cheers, guy.
I have an enormous amount of respect for Newcastle’s history as a footballing institution. The 96 Keegan side are one of my happiest football watching memories, and cemented from a young age that winning isn’t everything. I’ll remember that team forever, whereas there are scores of sides who’ve picked up silverware that I’ll never think of again.
Around a decade later I had the good fortune to marry a Geordie, and consequently spent a lot of time in the North East and at St James’ Park. A legitimately brilliant part of the world with some legitimately brilliant people and its own unique sensibility. The football has had its ups and downs, but that stadium has one of the best crowds in the game whenever it gets going, and the club is truly at the heart of city life.
I can’t hold it against the fanbase that a large section want success at any cost; they’re well overdue. I do think it’s a crying shame what’s happening there though, and that an institution so redolent of the soul of the English game can so easily be made just another plaything of the wealthy and unforgivable.
I think you’re spot on about the eventual trajectory and – to answer your question – I think that once the novelty of winning wears off, what you’re ultimately left with is the hollow knowledge that victory has come at too great a cost.
Never mind all that stuff – Hot Shot Hamish has returned. Bunnets in the air!!!
@hot-shot-hamish
Paired with Roy Race upfront, with Kevin “Mighty” Mouse on the wing and Johnny Dexter at the back, this could be quite some team (which should easily survive a 10 point penalty).
All they need is Billy The Fish in goal, and the world will be their lobster
Ahem
In goal would be either Stewart pere, or fils.
#thesafesthandsinsoccer
Plus Teenage wunderkind Billy Dane, as long as he didn’t mislay his famous boots. Yet again.
I belive that Wilson, just returned from his latest triumph atop the himalayas, is pulling on his number 9 shirt as we speak.
‘Haggerty F, Ferris, Noble, Codren, Crapper, Davis, Sullivan, O’Grady, Kembell, Hacker and Davitt’.
Asquith, Asquith, Asquith…
The musical connection being ” McIntyre, Treadmore and Davitt”, the HMHB album also inspired by the same classic Golden Gordon.
If the European super league comes into fruition in some form, we could end up with Harlem Globetrotters-style exhibition matches from elite players, mostly over 30. In the future, we will say “no, son – Manchester City and Manchester United used to be football teams just like Bury and Burnley but they got so big and made so much money that they decided to only play other really big, really rich clubs. I mean, you wouldn’t expect Drake to play a small local venue for not much money…it’s exactly the same with football”.
As an Ipswich supporter, a part of me says “bring it on”. We will still have 86 or so clubs playing each other for trophies and titles.
The option to go to Saudi Arabia for money has been there for as long as I can remember e.g. Don Revie so it stands to reason that profoundly moneyed-up people like that will want to buy the whole edifice. The problem is that you can’t just buy your way in. You end up with a vulgar F1 Las Vegas-style experience where basic things aren’t done very well.
I remember watching a fight on Sportsnight that was held in the Middle East somewhere with the crowd at ringside all appearing to be wealthy sheiks. Harry Carpenter effectively stopped commentating because each round’s time seemed to vary in length by quite a margin and the referee would be wandering off, leaving the boxers perplexed. After a while Harry said “well, this is a farce” and didn’t say much else.
Saudi Arabia hosting the World Cup uncontested is a clear stitch-up and has absolutely no merit apart from the money. I am very pissed off about that. It should be in the UK and Ireland. Or England. The infrastructure, the history, modern stadiums, inclusion, anti-racism measures, sustainability are all in place.
Good old Harry Carpenter, legend.
At the very minimum, the World Cup should be held in countries to which everyone can travel with the expectation that they will not be harassed, barred from games or outright criminalised.
Either that or the sport should shut its mouth forever about issues of diversity, inclusion and social justice.
At the moment, there are far too many hypocrites in the game trying to have it both ways, and it’s disgusting. You don’t have to take a stand, you’re allowed to just do your job. What you can’t do is publicly pat yourself on the back for your own virtue before selling it out at the first opportunity and then loudly defending your lack of backbone as pragmatism or, worse still, some sort of masterplan to improve the situation by your very presence.
If the soul of football is up for sale then fair enough, but at least own what you’re doing instead of taking us all for fools.
The one interesting stat I saw from the last WC was that in terms of safety, it was the best for female attendees.
I was thinking more of the Jewish and LGBTQ communities for Qatar, although I don’t believe it was very safe for the FIFA employee who was raped in Qatar and told she should consider marrying her attacker to avoid 100 lashes and a seven year jail term.
Frankly, I would trust FIFA and Qatar’s figures on women’s safety about as far as I could thrown Thomas Brolin.
Read and article in today’s Times that argued that the punishment on the Toffees was a preemptive strike to defang any independent regulator the government might foist of the football authorities. Given that Sean Dyche seems to have turned the team around, they would perhaps be advised to suck it up now rather than appealing and getting docked even more points at the end of the seaason.
The writer of the article estimated it would be at least two years for the authorities to sort out the 115 charges – some of them quite trivial (former manager Mancini getting too many freebie tickets being one example) against Man C.
Having brought their earlier owners’ dodgy dealings to the attention of the FA earlier, the Chelsea case may get resolved quicker and the club might get a little bit less in the way of punishment as a result.
Given the perceived value of both clubs to the EPL – aarrrgh! – “brand”, hard to see any kind of punishment either club receives being in any way proportionate to that handed out to EFC.
Even supposing either MCFC or CFC is relegated, it will be the clubs in the lower leagues who get penalized by being denied a shot at promotion by a far bigger and richer rival who will probably go straight back up.
Given that Sheff U were awarded £20,000,000 in compo over West Ham’s third-party ownership of Tevez and Mascherano a few years back, would imagine the clubs who got relegated while EFC stayed up these last two seasons will be on the phone to their lawyers as we speak.
Like DD, I’m more interested in the lower leagues these days. Remember when my team, Coventry, were in the play-offs earlier this year. Aside from their narrowly missed out on an apparently £170,000,000 pay day, I wasn’t sure that was an entirely bad thing as they would have come straight back down and may not have stopped going down. Sadly, they were left with little option to sell their two best players and return the loanees on which the team that took them to the play offs was built and are now struggling.
I find my relationship does correlate with the success of the teams I am interested in. Leeds under Bielsa really rekindled my obsession. Leeds in League 1 was also tremendous fun to watch matches and simpler to get tickets. Leeds struggling in the Prem was much less entertaining (save for one performance against Chelsea that was the footballing equivalent of a pity shag). The same with England (I stopped watching at half time last night).
I don’t love football like I used to. But when I watch great players on great pitches being refereed well, the game is undoubtedly more skilful and technically better than it used to be.
So I will go to the occasional Leeds game. Watch a fair few Woking games and watch football on the laptop every now and then. I really should get to cancelling my sports channels…
That’s true of my relationship, too. If Everton win, I’m in a good mood and everything is hunky dory and loving. Lose and I’m in a blue funk for days, so she avoids me.
😀
I’ve never understand that mentality. I like watching football played well, but the tribalism aspect really baffles me. It’s seemingly far more about the result than the football.
You can blame Bill Shankly (it’s always Liverpool’s fault). He said football is more important than life or death.
I am only joking of course. 😉
I think only wazzocks go in for the whole tribalism thing. which is why I follow a team in every league that I’m interested in, because sport without tribalism is just background TV really isn’t it?
Scotland: Celtic
England: Brighton
Spain: Valencia
Italy: Roma
NFL: Cincinnati Bengals
AFL: Fremantle Dockers
Euros/World Cups: Scotland (and then after the group stages, Italy).
“sport without tribalism is just background TV really isn’t it?
I honestly don’t find it thus. My favourite sports as a spectator are tennis and football, but I’m only really interested in the play, not the player/team.
Perhaps my attitude is related to the fact that my main love in life is swimming, an individual sport I have very little spectator interest in.
(Don’t even get me started on the whole jumping up and down in unison thing that footie fans do. Why that appeals to anyone is a complete mystery to me!)
Sadly, it was arguably Don Revie’s leeds team that industrialised on- field cheating 50 plus years ago. Synchronised dissent, time wasting, feigning injury and so on.
Whilst it seemed likely that Everton would get a points deduction, ten seems very harsh. For comparison: Portsmouth went into administration in 2009 – putting the entire future of the club at risk, and leaving a trail of creditors – and were only docked nine points.
It seems odd that capital projects, e.g. building a new stadium because your current one is falling down, are no longer admissible as an acceptable loss; they were permissible up to 2021. Some clubs, including West Ham and Man City, have been handed taxpayer-funded stadiums in return for what is, essentially, peppercorn rent. Everton also lost £200 million in sponsorship when Usmanov was sanctioned, as well as not being able to sell a valuable player asset (the unnamed, but easily identifiable, Player X), who was suspended due to a criminal charge that was eventually dropped.
That said, the spending during the Mosheri regime has been disastrous, with Championship-level players on Champions League wages: a classic case of a very rich man who knows the square root of bugger all about football. Some might point out, however, that when state-owned clubs are involved in top-flight football, all sense of fiscal responsibility dances off into the ether. All the other clubs, Everton included, start spending money they simply can’t recoup. State-owned clubs operate by maximising their losses, obfuscating when challenged, and funnelling payments via third parties in order to circumvent FFP.
Should Man City be found guilty of even 10 of their 115 charges, they should be relegated to the point where they’ll be playing against the Rochdale Under-13s five-a-side team.
There are examples of clubs who have had far more swingeing points deductions than Portsmouth – pretty sure Luton got docked a whopping 30 points one season. My own team, Coventry, suffered deduction after deduction severel years back and last season were hit with a 5-point suspended deduction because their pitch was unit to play on for five games. Bit unfair as the club does not own the stadium in which it plays and had no control over its being used for the Commonwealth Games.
The big problem for the Toffees isn’t the current 10-point deduction which Dyche, who is an excellent manager, has got the team playing well enough to easily claw back.
The real threat is the potential punishment awaiting the club when the four teams that got relegated instead of them take EFC’s owners to court for fielding players they should never have had. Bound to be a lot, lot more than the £20,000,000 WHU were hit with 15 years ago.
Agree with you 100% re the state-owned clubs. Man City are especially egregious in that, unlike Everton or Chelsea, they have made no effort to cli-operate with the authorities in resolving the issue. Worryingly for them, Guadiola has apparently been quoted as saying he will quit if he learns he has been lied to by che club’s owners
This period covers three years when we finished 10th, 12th and 16th. Everton couldn’t have cheated four teams in that time. Maximum of three only, I would have thought.
The possible cases would surely be about the last two seasons when EFC clung on to their EPL status by their fingertips.
While most papers are speculating about three cases, the Independent is quoting five – Burnley, Leeds, Leicester, Notts Forest and Southampton
https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/everton-sued-compensation-premier-league-news-b2449722.html
I can see the validity of the claims from Burnley, Leeds, Leicester, and Southampton.
Notts Forest? Are they seeking the cash to sign another 10 players
(or have I missed something – they dropped out of the Premier League in 1999, and only returned a couple of years ago)
Surely, it’s just 18th place that has a claim in 20/21 &, maybe 18th & 19th for 21/22? That’s Fulham, Burnley & Watford.
The financial issues are to do with seasons 2019/20, 2020/21 & 2021/22, aren’t they?
I believe the Leeds, Leicester, and Southampton claim is based on the argument that if the PL had acted quicker and imposed the penalty last season, they may not have been relegated (although Southampton’s claim is slightly tenuous as they finished 11 points behind Everton)
We would have been straight back up the following season, anyway. 😉
I think overspending over a period of 5 years and seemingly doing everything they can to hide it or excuse it is at least as bad as going into administration. Leeds were docked 10 points for going into administration and then a further 15 for coming out of it incorrectly.
I think Everton are not hard done by. It’s about right. The timeing is very beneficial to them though. Last year they would have been relagated with a 10 point deduction. This year, probably not.
My legal knowledge is a cigarette paper away from zero, but I don’t think the relegated clubs can take Everton to court, per se. The green light for some form of compensation is there, but it may be predicated on the panel’s finding that Everton enjoyed no on-field advantage from their financial mismanagement.
The West Ham vs Sheffield United situation was, at least in part, due to Tevez scoring at Old Trafford, which kept West Ham up. There’s no such correlation with Everton and the relegated clubs from last season.
Some sort of compensation will happen, but the idea that Everton can – or are liable to – simply write a cheque for £100 million to each team is beyond farcical. Clubs receive parachute payments to offset relegation; clubs can receive as much as £50 million in the first year after they go down. Will, say, Leeds get £100 million from Everton and £40-£50 million in parachute payments? They’d be earning more than clubs still in the Premier League. Are other
Championship clubs not at a disadvantage as a result?
Even the most one-eyed tribalist would struggle to defend Everton against any points deduction, and possibly compensation, but it’s far from straightforward.
Why don’t they just change the sport’s name to Moneyball and be done with it?
Of course, Everton have the luxury this year of being better than the three really, really poor teams at the bottom. If they’d have been punished the same way last year (as they should have been) they would have been down.
It seems they may also receive an additional penalty for last year’s accounts
And they are better this year because, having survived relegation they were able to take the players from their relegated rivals.
Net transfers last two years, in millions of pounds.
Dyche -39.6 (Feb 2023 to Sep 2023)
Lampard +2.8 (Jan 2022 to Jan 2023)
Benitez -2.25 (July 2021 to Jan 2022)
I think Iwobi’s move to Fulham was for financial rather than football reasons.
According to Lineker’s podcast, Man City have 115 charges levied against them, as opposed to Everton’s one case.
So if Man City are found guilty of all charges, they are looking a points deduction of 1150, which would relegate them to 12th tier football. To my delight, someone got there before me on Wikipedia, listing them among the Manchester League Division One teams.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Football_League
The chance to rotate the squad for Murray Trophy, Open Trophy and Manchester League Cup matches means Pep should be able to keep his top players ready for a return to the EPL when they’re about 60
I’m not surprised but still frustrated by the lack of consistency in points deductions. Have seen plenty of people saying Everton have a 10 point deduction but other clubs have been given 9 points for going into administration.
At Southampton we were given a 10 point penalty for going into administration but as we’d already been relegated to League One the FA applied the deduction at the start of the season after.
Maybe someone senior at the FA is a Pompey fan
On the basis that Leeds, Southampton and Coventry have all been the most harshly treated, some clearly doesn’t like Wee Gordon Strachan.
@leedsboy
Arf!
Next up, Man Utd deducted 10 points for being crap.
That works out at a very reasonable one point
per season since SAF stood down
I’m not an apologist for breaking the rules, nor am I a wild proponent of whataboutery. If points deductions are the new line in the sand, however, we would all like to see this applied in an egalitarian manner.
It does seems ironic that in the same month Everton get a points deduction for financial mismanagement, Newcastle’s owners get the green light to effectively loan players to themselves: they can sell a player to a Saudi Arabian club to balance the books, then get him back in on loan immediately. This is clearly an attempt to circumvent the profit and sustainability rules. It’s worth noting that Everton voted for this, too – was this a two-fingered gesture at the Premier League, or the fact that their new owners also have a multi-club model? I’ll leave it up to you…
Can we do this with bands as well, so that we don’t get the offensive statistics about Backstreet Boys selling more records than Elvis or whatever? Deducted 20 million units… for being crap.
Moose, be careful old chap. You’ve only been back 24 hours or so and you come up with this idea. Which sounds fun!
Interesting article about points deductions from the Gruaniad from earlier in the week
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/20/everton-docked-points-sunderland-manchester-united-arsenal-middlesbrough-portsmouth