Agents paid £67m by Premier League clubs

[Hansern]

9 mill £!! Holy mother of all thats good and pure.


Chelsea and Liverpool paid out £9.2m and £9m respectively to agents in the year ending in September 2010, according to Premier League figures.

That was £3m higher than the next biggest club - Manchester City, who which splashed out £5.9m on agents.

In all £67.1m passed hands between the 20 top-flight clubs and agents for the period October 2009 to September 2010 - £3.5m less than the previous year.

Blackpool were bottom of the top-flight agent table having spent just £45,000.

However, the newly promoted club imposed strict spending limits when they were promoted to the top-flight at the end of last season.

cfc top league table £9.2m, #lfc £9m, #mcfc £5.9m, #thfc £5.3m
Sunderland £4.4m, Everton £3.5m, Bolton £3.5m, West Ham £3.4, #mufc £2.3, #avfc £2.2m

 

[Bologna]

What I don't understand is if the agents work for the players how come clubs have to pay out?

Steven Spielberg doesn't pay Liam Nesson's agent any money when Liam signs up for the latest blockbuster. Or does he?

 

[Hansern]

Rumours on some other sites is that David Dein could be our new CEO. If he is appointed, maybe he can straighten this out..

 

[King Binny]

I'm guessing it includes agent fees for renewal of contracts etc? 3m more than City who made much more expensive signings seems excessive.

 

[Rosco]

A lot of clubs are using agents effectively as scouts.

Which makes you wonder why they bother having scouts in the first place.

 

[Richey]

Contract negotiations would account for a large chunk of it.

Then maybe agents for players who are free agents might get a lot too?

And it could be that we had to pay a fee to Benitez's agent as part of his settlement, as well as to Hodgson's for essentially signing him?

Even though we may not have signed many players we have certainly had a lot of changes this year and undoubtedly lots of dealings with agents, so it all adds up.

 

[kingjulian]

Re: Agents paid £67m by Premier League clubs

David Dein was brilliant at Arsenal. He was instrumental in all the Emirates tie-ups wasn't he and finding the finance for the stadium was he not? Without that Arsenal could never have realized the stadium.

Also he has got a hell of a lot of clout in the FA.

 

[King Binny]

I forgot about the point that we might have to pay for agents to help move players out too.

Liverpool's new owners, New England Sports Ventures, have made the pursuit of better value in the transfer market a priority. But as the club seeks to ship out many of the players that Benitez had on the books, their payments to agents may not look much better when the Premier League publishes its next table of sums paid to agents in a year's time.

Hodgson, who has complained publicly that Benitez bequeathed him an "unbelievably overstaffed" club, has sold Diego Cavalieri, Javier Mascherano, Damien Plessis, Albert Riera, Krisztián Nemeth, Yossi Benayoun, plus Lauri Dalla Valle and Alex Kacaniklic, makeweights in the deal which brought in Paul Konchesky from Fulham. Each has incurred agents' fees and so, too, the loan deals including Philipp Deggen, Alberto Aquilani, Nabil El-Zar and Emiliano Insua.

Hodgson did not choose to sell Mascherano and Benayoun, but he and his former managing director, Christian Purslow, mandated agents to find new clubs for some of the players they were desperate to shed. The substantial effort put into keeping those stars that Liverpool do not want to lose has brought new contracts for Fernando Torres and Pepe Reina, from which their agents also take a cut.

The incoming players have been Brad Jones, Fabio Aurelio, Konchesky, Christian Poulsen, Joe Cole, Danny Wilson, Jonjo Shelvey and Raul Meireles. A concern for Liverpool must be how to sell some of those players currently out on loan whom they do not want back: Aquilani has impressed at Juventus but Insua, also on a season's loan, is currently not a starter at Galatasaray. Agents may be called in to help secure deals which will spare Liverpool their salaries.

The new director of football strategy, Damien Comolli, also has his ideas about whom he wants to bring in – and it is little wonder that Liverpool are so desperate to do something about their academy's dire record in nurturing players of Premier League standard. In the past decade, only three Anfield academy graduates have played 40 or more games for a Premier League club.

 

[King Binny]

* Liverpool also paid over £9m to agents but they were involved in 20 permanent deals (Maxi Rodriguez, Jonjo Shelvey, Milan Jovanovic, Joe Cole, Danny Wilson, Christian Poulsen, Brad Jones, Raul Meireles and Paul Konchesky IN, Andrea Dossena, Andrei Voronin, Christopher Buchtmann, Yossi Benayoun, Alberto Riera, Krisztian Nemeth, Diego Cavalieri, Javier Mascherano, Alex Kacaniklic, Lauri Dalla Valle and Damien Plessis OUT) and high-profile loan exits for Philipp Degen, Alberto Aquilani, Emiliano Insua and Nabil El-Zar.

* Liverpool's most expensive fee is likely to have winged its way to the agent of free transfer Joe Cole. He could claim a percentage of Cole's reported £5m signing-on fee and £90,000 a week over four years.