The PL exec board royally messed up the first case but so did Everton.
Everton's defence in large parts was absolutely horrific. There were tons of holes in the PL's charges that even I could say were wrong - for example, the PL claimed, and Everton didn't argue strongly enough against it to sway the IC (who remember simply look at the 'facts of the case' presented to them and agreed upon by both sides at pre-trial hearings), that the Premier League was Everton's biggest market for selling players pre and during COVID.
That is demonstrably wrong. Everton sold more players to European teams, for more cash in total, than they did to Premier League sides during that time. Yes, they did sell to PL sides, but it was 2 players for big sums, and even those big sums did not add up to what they'd brought in from Europe.
That was a key argument for Everton, and it was lost because the PL put a top-class forensic accountant up against - I kid you not - a lecturer from the University of Liverpool.
But the PL's forensic accountant and Everton's (pretend) one, agreed that the PL were actually right, even though publicly available information says they weren't.
Everton also tried the stupid thing with Sigurdsson. Some of their defence/mitigation was horrific and deserved to be laughed out of court.
Some of it was valid and I hope they have done enough to sway the new IC in that direction.
The initial report is clunky and full of holes too. A lack of reasoning or calculation from the IC, basing their decisions on woolly precedents set by EFL cases.