Everton Outperforming Big-Spending Chelsea Despite 10-Point Deduction
Everton Football Club appeared to be a club in crisis when it was announced on 17 November that they had received a ten-point deduction after breaching the financial rules of the Premier League.
The bookmakers reacted to the news by slashing Everton’s relegation betting odds, with the ruling leaving the Toffees in nineteenth position in the table and with just four points on the board. Goodison Park was a cauldron of anger a few days later when Everton hosted Manchester United, with mass protests against the deduction taking place, although a 3-0 defeat against the Red Devils meant that the club went into December with the very real prospect of relegation taking place.
What has followed since that result has been nothing short of spectacular. A 1-0 victory at the City Ground was followed up by consecutive home wins against Newcastle and Chelsea, while the most recent 2-0 win at Burnley means that the team now have sixteen points on the board.
In fairness to Everton, these results hadn’t come out of the blue when you consider the team had already collected wins against Crystal Palace, West Ham, Bournemouth and Brentford, with the Merseyside outfit now matching table-toppers Arsenal when it comes to away form.
Those that like to bet on the Premier League can now find Everton’s relegation odds being as big as 18/1 and the plain fact is that Sean Dyche’s team would have twenty-six points this season had they not suffered from the deduction.
To put this into context, that would be four points more than Chelsea, a club who have spent north of €1 billion in the past three transfer windows, with Dyche continuing to demonstrate his worth after keeping the Toffees in the top flight last season.
Due to the proposed takeover of the club, there hasn’t been a huge amount of player investment, although the manager has galvanised the squad and we’ve seen the emergence of young talent such as Jarrad Branthwaite and James Garner.
While the squad remains relatively threadbare, Dominic Calvert-Lewin remains fit for the time being and has fifteen appearances under his belt, with Jack Harrison representing a shrewd piece of business after his loan capture from Leeds United in August.
Odds comparison sites now provide single figure quotes that we see Everton finish in the top half of this season’s Premier League table, with a gap of just six points separating them from tenth-placed Chelsea.
The ten-point deduction has created a siege mentality at Goodison Park and the ruling could yet be overturned on appeal. However, Everton now have a seven-point cushion over the bottom three clubs against all the odds.