spectacular administrative blunder leaves Everton FC out of pocket

Dan Gosling - Everton youngster

A player under 24 can leave a club at the end of his deal but, if they have received a written offer to stay, the club that buys him either has to agree compensation or pay a fee set by a tribunal. 

Dan Gosling - England U21

The Premier League ruling that Gosling can leave for nothing means Everton have missed out on a fee estimated at £4 million, while the player is certain to negotiate a substantial pay rise at his next club. Happy days for the employee, not so much for Kenwright and co… lest we not forget that £4m has bought David Moyes players like Jagielka, Cahill, Arteta, and Pienaar in the past which underlines the massive loss it is to a club already operating on a shoestring!

As an avid Evertonian and veteran season ticket holder it came as a massive shock that such an affable young man would do this to the club. By all accounts players and staff at Everton were equally shocked with protestations of “this is the way we did it with Rooney and Rodwell” falling upon deaf ears at the tribunal. It’s actually more worrying that they did it that way with Rooney and Rodwell because we’d be £30m poorer and if Rodwell eventually leaves Goodison, another £20m+ payday will come Everton’s way! Startling that the club would expose itself to such massive financial risk for the sake of writing down what they had already verbalised.

So often business owners live by the “if I treat you well, you’ll treat me well” ethos and in an ideal world this would be fantastic, however, this case highlights that it is not an ideal world and a gentleman’s agreement no longer has the same credence it once did. So often businesses come to us with employment issues after the fact when all we can do is damage limitation to achieve the best possible outcome. However, for the majority of our clients we work with them proactively to ensure their paperwork is watertight and kept up to date and any employee issues are dealt with by a qualified and experienced employment lawyer from day 1.

If only Mr Kenwright had played by the rules and not thought he was still living in the era of the Cannon Ball kid! It’s a sad state of affairs when your word is not enough but these are the times in which we live. Maybe Bill should stick to musicals and certainly engage with a better legal team to take care of the formalities!

If you are interested in finding out more about our Employment Solutions packages then please give me a call on 07794 552896 or email me on lauramcdonald@canter-law.co.uk.