https://x.com/slbsn/status/2033696324835586534

This is a good write up about it.

Most telling bit - the conclusions:

None of the above is to say that the Chelsea sanction is straightforwardly wrong in every respect. Co-operation should be rewarded. The conduct of the previous ownership is a genuine distinction from cases where the incumbent club is responsible for the breach. The absence of a PSR consequence is a material fact. And Sanction Agreements (ie settlements) are different from disputed charges in front of an independent commission.

But regulation draws its authority from consistency and credibility, not from the technical defensibility of individual decisions taken in isolation. That is why a Sanction Agreement needs ratification from an independent commission - in this case one including Robert Glancy KC who heard the Premier League’s views on co-operation first hand in the Forest case. When a league simultaneously argues before an independent commission that a 50 per cent co-operation discount is excessive, then later agrees to a sanction in which co-operation eliminates sporting consequences altogether before also halving the financial penalty, it is not applying a single coherent framework. It is applying different starting points to different clubs in different forums, and hoping the contrast is not noticed.

It has been noticed.

When Everton supporters ask why their club lost points, twice, for overspending while Chelsea has faced no sporting consequence for deliberate, concealed and systematic deception, the honest answer is that the rules, as applied, do not produce the same answer for everyone.

And when Richard Masters mistakenly referred to “small clubs” in the DCMS hearing in early 2024, he was forced to clarify that “It would be incorrect to infer from this that there is any unfair treatment based on Club size, as suggested in the Committee’s media statement. Indeed, the point I made was the opposite, in that the Premier League Board applies the Rules consistently, irrespective of the Club in question.”

Never has that question of consistency been more in focus.