The Athletic’s use of an Everton player on an article about rule breaking and time wasting is utterly predictable but intensely frustrating for a fanbase that has seen it all before.
The publication used an image of Everton left back Vitaly Mykolenko in an article about time wasting around throw ins and while it might seem like a minor issue, it points to a bigger problem with large media companies and Everton Football Club.
Let’s talk about the Tim Iroegbunam Law.
In the summer of 2024 a handful of Premier League clubs were labelled the ‘PSR Six’ by the Independent.
The BBC and other media outlets also listed them in critical articles, suggesting the clubs were a cartel of rule breakers who were circumnavigating PSR rules with dodgy deals between themselves.
Of course, there is some truth in that. Clubs were doing last minute ‘swap’ deals to meet PSR rules. However, this was completely within the rules. And weren’t Everton told regularly that if you break the rules you get a justified punishment at the same time the likes of Chelsea and Villa were being lauded for being ‘clever’ for beating PSR by selling stadiums and hotels to themselves?
In any case, Everton’s participation in the scandal was fleeting. While Villa desperately traded a number of players, all Everton were guilty of was selling Lewis Dobbin in exchange for Tim Iroegbunam.
Fast forward 18 months and the deal was a no brainer. Even at the time £9m for an incredibly talented midfielder was a bargain and Iroegbunam has since proved to be a competent Premier League midfielder. His value is now probably somewhere double that figure and he has become a solid member of Everton’s squad.
The fact Everton lost a player now playing for Preston in the Championship in exchange is a reflection on Aston Villa’s transfer strategy. From an Everton point of view, Iroegbunam was a clever buy in a situation where Villa were both desperate to sell and keen to pay for winger who was not wanted.
In context, he was less than the prices paid for Ellis Simms and Tom Cannon by Championship clubs. If we are talking suspicious transfers then Brentford and Bournemouth’s obsession with overpaying for Liverpool’s average u21 stars should probably face more scrutiny. Fabio Carvalho was three times the price of Iroegbunam. Sepp van den Berg the same, while Gannon-Doak was more than twice the price.
In 2024, Everton actually beat PSR limits by selling players legitimately. The club got an excellent fee for Ben Godfrey from Atalanta to get over the limit, which prevented them having to sell Jarrad Branthwaite to Manchester United in a cut-price deal. And there is the crux of the matter, because a lot of people were upset that the ‘Sky Six’ was outsmarted by the ‘PSR Six’.
In response to the shameful acquisition of an England youth international for a paltry £9m, many publications led with a picture of Iroegbunam as the poster boy of the transfer dealings. The BBC did so on three separate occasions.
Interestingly, Aston Villa were involved in an even shadier deal that was largely ignored. Chelsea signed Omari Kellyman from Villa for an inflated £19m in exchange for Villa signing left back Ian Maatsen for £35m. In just 18 months Kellyman is now playing for League One Cardiff City, while Maatsen is second choice at Villa behind Luca Digne.
Elsewhere, Forest grabbed a bargain with Elliot Anderson from Newcastle. In return Newcastle paid £20m for a fourth choice goalkeeper in Odysseas Vlachodimos. It was the most blatent inflated fee of the entire summer. He has not played a single minute for Newcastle and has since been farmed out on loan to Sevilla.
Let’s call it the Iroegbunam Law. Whenever a minor ‘scandal’ is blown out of all proportion by the media you can expect an Everton player to be front and centre. Think of the change in law to award a corner if a goalkeeper holds on to the ball for more than eight seconds. Several publications gleefully chose Jordan Pickford as the poster boy of the news.
Last season Jordan Pickford wasn’t in the top five goalkeepers for average time spent with the ball in their hands. Fellow English keepers Aaron Ramsdale and Dean Henderson were far ahead of him. From a team perspective, Everton were 11th slowest to restart games, with Forest, Villa and Arsenal all taking significantly longer to waste time.
Sky Sports, Talksport and the BBC ignored the statistics and opted for a picture of Jordan Pickford to accompany their article.
That brings us to this week. The Athletic has reported on potential changes to the rules that would stop time wasting around corners, goal kicks and the Premier League’s new favourite thing; throw ins.
Long throws were taking up to 35 seconds a time, says the article, citing two Brentford throws in a game against Liverpool this season. Brentford have scored an impressive seven goals from long throws this season using the tactic. Other clubs such as Crystal Palace and Thomas Frank’s Spurs are also famously reliant on long throws.
Elsewhere, Arsenal top the charts for time taken over corners, significantly more than Everton.
In fact, Everton very rarely take long throws. Jake O’Brien attempts them from the right wing on occasion with very little success but the team almost never attempts them from the left.
But the Iroegbunam Law is a solid one. When the Athletic decided to illustrate their news article with a picture to illustrate the frustration over time wasting they chose an Everton player. Vitaly Mykolenko, who rarely attempts a long throw in a team that rarely even throws it long, is seemingly the poster boy for timewasting in the Premier League.
The Athletic, which launched itself as a paid-for bastion of sports journalism, is suffering from the same fate as many sports publications. The race to the clickbait bottom means you have to pander to the clubs with the huge worldwide fanbases. The quality drops and you end up with this; a desperate attempt to appease Arsenal and Liverpool’s rabid online fans by only using ‘unimportant’ clubs on negative articles.
We get it. Everybody has bills to pay. But there is something depressing about sports publications who hold themselves to a high standard ignoring their own data-led approach to push false narratives about clubs they simply do not care about.
It would be fantastic is Everton pushed back. Managing the media is an important part of club communications these days and the constant barrage of negative press around Everton, no matter how subtle, can add up to impact the club massively.