How wrong was Michel Platini over financial fair play? Just look at Everton. Remember the club, as it was?

Noses pressed against the glass, always on the outside, always struggling to make progress.

Couldn't sign the best players, couldn't get a buyer, couldn't find a new ground. Doomed to be mid-table, for ever. Doomed to remain in the shadow of the elite, their last trophy the 1995 FA Cup.

Everton made a statement by bringing back home favourite Wayne Rooney has after 13 years

The end of Financial Fair Play has allowed Farhad Moshiri to invest in the Everton first team

And now look at them. Significant movers in the transfer market this summer, big plans for the future, too. Everton are revived.

If manager Ronald Koeman gets the best out of his new players, including Wayne Rooney, there could be another challenger for the Champions League places. So that's seven: two on Merseyside, two in Manchester, three in London.

Maybe more if we allow our imaginations to consider another bolter from outside the elite, like Leicester City two years ago. This is healthy competition. This is what FFP was going to strangle.

It is no coincidence that the moment it collapsed, Everton became an attractive proposition and Bill Kenwright found a serious investor in Farhad Moshiri. New money came to West Brom, Wolves and Aston Villa, too — all clubs that had been on the market with barely a nibble.

There is nothing wrong with financial responsibility, but owners have to be allowed to invest. Not just in infrastructure, because that only goes so far, short-term, but in the now, in players, in the shaping of a new team. FFP was stripping football clubs of their potential to grow.

That is what Everton have done this summer. They have got bigger, they have moved on. And not in a way that puts the club in any jeopardy. The Romelu Lukaku deal has financed the arrival of Davy Klaassen, Jordan Pickford and Michael Keane.

Beyond that, Everton now have room to invest reasonably, to gamble responsibly on business success as any investor would. Four other players have arrived. Not as expensive, but still representing significant recruitment. Rooney's transfer, in wages, fees and bonuses is believed to come in at roughly £24million.

Everton would have shied away from trying to make this leap forward five years ago. They would have been wrapped in red tape by UEFA and tied down by the big clubs.

Of course, losing Lukaku to Manchester United shows there is still distance to travel. Yet it is hard to resist individual ambition from seventh in the league.

What Everton are hoping to do is break that cycle, to move up, to show the next generation they can compete with the elite.

The signing of Jordan Pickford, among others, shows that Everton are able to grow as a club

It all goes to show how wrong was Michel Platini over his Financial Fair Play pet project

They have designs on being the next Tottenham, and now have the freedom to do that. Platini may have started with good intentions but his plans were cynically hijacked by protectionist forces. What is happening under Koeman is exactly what frightened the elite.

Had FFP continued, Everton would have been making up the numbers again. Now there is genuine optimism.

Who in their right mind doesn't see this as improvement?

Want to know the utter lunacy of the loan system? The longest serving professional player at Chelsea is a goalkeeper called Matej Delac, who signed for the club in September 2009.

Delac has played a total of 154 games across nine seasons for Inter Zapresic, Vitesse, Dynamo Ceske Budejovice, Vitoria de Guimaraes, Vojvodina, Sarajevo, Arles-Avignon and Excel Mouscron. He has never played for Chelsea.

Tours threaten player safety

Weather permitting, Liverpool will play Crystal Palace in the first round of the Asia Trophy on Wednesday. A monsoon forced a training session indoors on Monday and more rain is expected to take a toll on the playing surface in Hong Kong.

The last time the Premier League's pre-season tournament was played there, Andre Villas-Boas threatened to withdraw his Tottenham team after Jan Vertonghen and Matija Nastasic of Manchester City suffered injuries on a boggy pitch.

This follows the chaotic circumstances in Beijing last year, when a match between Manchester United and Manchester City was cancelled with similar fears for player safety.

Liverpool players trained in the rain at night at the Tseung Kwan O Sports Ground

The clubs had to make do with half-paced training sessions in one of the world's most aggressively polluted cities instead. Jose Mourinho was so upset with the preparation, he ordered United to train at dawn on their return to Manchester.

Without doubt, the climate in many of the destinations east — not to mention the travelling time — is not conducive to athletic conditioning.

With the physical demands of the season increasing, club executives may soon have to decide between player welfare and the financial benefits of an Asian tour. That will be one of the year's shorter board meetings, one imagines.

Champion Roger is fit for purpose

Some think Roger Federer got it easy in Sunday's Wimbledon final. Well, yes and no. Marin Cilic's blister played a part — certainly his reaction to it, mentally — but staying fit is also the test of a tournament.

At the Australian Open final in 2013, Andy Murray was treated for a particularly spiteful looking blister at the start of the third set. Beaten by Novak Djokovic, again, he limped up to get his consolation prize with all the freedom of an arthritic 80-year-old, yet dismissed pain as a factor.

'I had two black toenails after the US Open,' said Murray. 'Blisters are sore, but you play through them. I'd say 90 per cent of the players here got through at least one match with the type of blisters I'm dealing with now.'

Marin Cilic was treated for blisters during his Wimbledon final defeat by Roger Federer

At the previous Grand Slam, the US Open, which he won, Murray explained that any five-set encounter with Djokovic will cost a toenail or two due to the way he moves his opponent around.

So, yes, it was fortunate for Federer that Cilic saw his blister as an obstacle; but negotiating a tournament in the best of health at 35 is part of being a great champion.

Striking won't give Tiler a lift

There is a reason the tax man doesn't go on strike. Who misses him, if he walks out? The same with postmen, before family finances shifted online. Birthdays and Christmas aside, how much good news arrived in the morning mail? Bills, mainly.

So who cared if your postie joined a picket line for a month? The gas board just had to wait for their money. Happy days.

This came to mind on hearing that weightlifter Rebekah Tiler had gone on strike in protest at UK Sport's funding cuts. British Weightlifting says it no longer has the finances to support an elite female squad, UK Sport having ended funding in June.

Tiler withdrew from the British Championships, tweeting: 'Sorry guys, on strike till some funding is found. British Weightlifting, thanks for messing my life up.'

Weightlifter Rebekah Tiler had gone on strike in protest at UK Sport's funding cuts

You can see the problem. Domestic weightlifting is a sport with barely any public profile. It is not on television and does not command column inches, so sponsorship opportunities are scarce. The British Championships had crowds of no more than 500 on either day and not all would have been paying customers.

If Tiler hadn't staged industrial action, few outside hardcore supporters would have known the Championships were on at all. So strike action will not change her circumstances. Medals might because they are all that piques UK Sport's interest, but without financial support, progress will be hard to achieve. No medals, no money, no weightlifting job.

Zoe Smith, gold medallist at the Commonwealth Games, is now working as a barista. If she downed tools at her coffee shop, someone might actually notice, cappuccino having a fanbase weightlifting can only dream of.

Unless there is a prior arrangement that what happens in Utah stays in Utah, Jose Mourinho's stubbornness over Antonio Valencia could return to haunt him.

Mourinho was asked to remove Valencia for a nasty, retaliatory tackle in the pre-season game with Real Salt Lake on Tuesday morning. It was the referee's compromise in what is a non-competitive fixture. Take him off, rather than have him sent off, and you can keep 11 on the field. Mourinho refused; Valencia got a red card.

That will probably be the end of it. Yet in 2006, red cards received by Wayne Rooney and Paul Scholes during a pre-season tournament in Amsterdam were referred to the FA who had no option but to act. Both players were banned for three Premier League matches.

Sir Alex Ferguson stored it up in his big book of grievances, convinced the FA had a vendetta against his club. They haven't, but it is fair to say that, like Ferguson, Mourinho would have few pals within the organisation to plead his case. If the referee wished to make it uncomfortable by filing a report, there is precedent for action.

Manchester United boss Jose Mourinho was told he could substitute Valencia off, but did not

Hameed needs to find clarity

Little than eight months ago, Haseeb Hameed became the youngest player to open the batting for England. Hameed enjoyed a very promising tour of India before injury forced him home after three Tests.

On Tuesday, he was playing for Lancashire's second XI against the MCC at Urmston. He made 110 over five hours, but needs time even to get back into his county's first team. With England desperately seeking a partner for Alastair Cook, this is a terrible shame.

Fitness has played its part — he underwent an operation to improve his breathing, as well as another on the damaged finger — but the word is Hameed's troubles have run deeper.

His father Ismail quit work to coach his sons after school and, having done such an outstanding job, remains a big influence. Professional and parental advice, however, can conflict and it's feared this happened in Hameed's case, causing confusion. It is to be hoped he can learn when father knows best; and when to listen to those whose job it is to shape his game from here.

The BBC were confused over Johanna Konta's nationality throughout Wimbledon.

A preview of her semi-final with Venus Williams jingoistically described her as 'one of our own', when clearly her upbringing in Australia played a huge part in her development and she didn't arrive on British shores until she was 14.

Then, in a Radio 4 interview on Tuesday, John Humphrys described Konta as being born in Hungary, when two seconds of research would have revealed she, in fact, has Hungarian parents.

We are all familiar with Konta's journey now; but if the BBC wishes to make an issue of it they could at least have the respect to get basic facts right.

Jo Konta's nationality was recently questioned by BBC Radio 4 presenter John Humphrys

British Athletics had a choice for the discretionary place in the men's 200 metres at this month's IAAF World Championships in London.

There was Adam Gemili, born in the city, attended Dartford Grammar School, member of Blackheath and Bromley Harriers; or there was Zharnel Hughes, born in Anguilla, raised in Anguilla, trains at Racers Track Club in Jamaica. No prizes for guessing who got the nod.

This, remember, is a discretionary place. Neither were fast enough at the trials to qualify automatically. So here was a chance for performance director Neil Black to show support for athletes from Britain.

To back Gemili and send a message to British juniors that there is a path to the biggest stage and Team GB won't resort to any means necessary to get a runner on the podium.

Adam Gemili was overlooked for men's 200 metres at the World Championships in London

Anguilla does not have an Olympic organisation, so its runners compete for Britain as members of an Overseas Territory. Of course, with Lord Coe and Princess Anne in such high places, we could lobby for change to give Anguilla, and its runners, their due — but it is so much easier just to cream off the top.

Still, if you wonder why athletics struggles in Britain, look no further. Gemili gave up a career as a footballer for this. Why did he bother? Why would anyone?

From this season, 130 grassroots leagues administered by the Football Association will begin trialling sin bins for dissent. If successful, we will see this in the professional game before long — and not a day too soon. Sin bins have always been the way to go on this issue.

A foul, a deliberate handball, may have mitigating circumstances — but what manager would tolerate dissent if it was capable of reducing his team to 10 men for 10 minutes?

The opportunity to reflect while standing in the vicinity of the man whose plan you have just trashed completely, should make any player think twice before confronting a referee.