Amid the swirling chaos surrounding Everton, Nottingham Forest and Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR), spare a thought for Luton Town. Not only have the Hatters done nothing wrong, they’ve done everything right, yet are still trapped in the same relegation limbo as those who have breached financial regulations.
Luton have operated within their means and spent just £22m post-promotion, prepared for the worst and fought for the best.
Written off by practically everyone outside the club, they now have a genuine chance at survival despite an injury crisis which has ruled 10 players (including Tom Lockyer) out of their weekend clash with Manchester City, with on-loan Issa Kabore also unavailable against his parent club. They are level on points with Forest and two behind Everton, who they host on 3 May.
Yet they could end the season believing they’ve survived, only for Everton’s second PSR appeal of the season to reward them more points.
“It’s the ultimate VAR in many ways,” Kevin Harper of Luton Town Supporters’ Trust tells i.
“First and foremost, let’s do everything that we can to get into a position whereby the outcome doesn’t affect us. We have to play Everton, so if we beat them we go above them. Then we’d have two games after that to try and pull away a little bit.
“I’ve heard Rob Edwards say on a few occasions that his league table doesn’t involve points deductions and he wants to finish 17th regardless of that. That’s absolutely the right way to do it.”
The theory behind this is absolutely correct, but the reality is more complex. As Luton winger Andros Townsend said on BBC Radio 5 Live earlier this week, you can’t help but look at the table as it is. Townsend said the ongoing cases “make a mockery of the Premier League” and berated the lack of existing guidelines for punishment, a common criticism league-wide.
“It seems like there’s no morals, no class about it all,” Harper says. “Someone’s got to say for the good of the game: ‘These are the punishments’, because it’s making an absolute farce of it. We need to bring in rules that everyone knows the punishment of at the end of it. And if you fall foul of it, you fall foul of it.”
The current series of hearing and appeals would be messy enough without the potential third Everton case coming up this summer regarding interest costs on loan repayments.
This could mean the Toffees receive a further points deduction outside the season which would have seen them get relegated in 2023-24, but actually applies to the 2024-25 campaign. As a sports lawyer told i yesterday, this would give Luton a fair case to sue Everton and the Premier League.
“The timing of it all has to improve,” Harper says. “The accountancy period ends on the 30 June. How on earth were these things for this season only coming into place in January? That’s nearly seven months.
“Even if accounts aren’t made public, why are we delaying and delaying and delaying and now getting into a situation where a week after the season ends someone could be happy and someone could be distraught?”
Luton have also made no secret of their belief that Everton should have received a harsher penalty of their second breach.
“This is Everton’s second time, albeit a smaller level – so the points deduction should certainly be a greater amount,” CEO Gary Sweet said.
“As a club that has gone through a 30-point deduction for something I see as relatively less, then it is somewhere between the two. It has to be a punishment level that is a real deterrent.”
Harper agrees: “If I do time for burglary and then I come out and do a burglary the second time, the judge is going to put me away for longer the second time because I’m not learning my lesson.
“Why is football the exact opposite? Why would you feel sorry for the cheats and not the ones that are trying to do it the right way?”
Behind all this is the frustration that Luton believe their Premier League status proves just how poorly run Everton and Nottingham Forest have been. The Hatters have proven that astute signings and the correct manager can at least make you competitive, even if their poor start to the season may well have condemned them to relegation anyway.
Since their third Premier League game, they have lost by more than two goals just once, beaten Newcastle, Brighton and Bournemouth, drawn with Liverpool and given Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United tight games. Given their budget and the scale of their operation, this is remarkable.
“It’s not on us that any of this has happened,” Harper says. “We’re in the Premier League by merit as of this season. But we weren’t given the credit for it when we came up, everyone was coming out with all that nonsense that you have to spend, spend, spend, spend, spend to survive.
“And then within months, two teams have got points deductions because they’ve spent to survive. With the narrative around all of this, I can understand why clubs get themselves into this mess.
“But ultimately, you’ve got the rules in front of you. Effectively, you’ve got to lose near enough half a billion quid in three seasons to fall foul of these things. How can how can you possibly get into a situation where you can lose that much money?
“You don’t have to come up and spend all of your £100m windfall, you can just buy wisely and can still sustain it. Hopefully that message will get across but it probably won’t if we get relegated at the expense of one of these two clubs.”
Whether Luton stay up this season or not, a significant proportion of their campaign has now been blighted by the will they/won’t they psychodrama of PSR punishments. They have been chasing a constantly moving target, trapped between hope and despair due to events entirely out of their control.
If they survive, Luton would likely still be met with derisory comments that they only stayed up due to deductions elsewhere.
Maybe that will be true, yet those penalties have been more than deserved, bestowed upon clubs who have previously ensured their own survival with a flagrant disregard for the rules and the sanctity of the competition.
Luton’s survival would be one of the great Premier League success stories. Even their near-survival would be remarkable. At the very least, if they don’t manage it, they have proven it can be done while running clubs sustainably.
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