Agents get some of our money

Last Updated : 21-Jul-2005 by
Gordon Armstrong - agent involved in the sale of Richard Chaplow from Burnley
It is money that has gone out of the game but the £211,000 Burnley committed in agents’ fees was less than half of the clubs in our league and a considerable distance behind the almost £1.9 million that cash strapped Leeds handed out.

In total over £7.8 million was lost to agents from Football League clubs alone, it really makes you wonder just how much money is disappearing out of the game from Premiership clubs, and of that figure over £6.8 million came from Championship clubs. That was despite the fact that only 222 out of 888 transfer deals involved agents.

Overall in the three divisions there were a total of 2,860 transfer deals and the good news is that all but 379 of them were agent free and that is an improvement.

If we are going to condemn Leeds for their spend, and so we should, then it is also worth nothing that Crewe were the only Championship club not to pay a single penny in fees to agents.

The figures below show the full details of money to agents from each of the clubs in the Championship, these figures do not include any payments that were due from deals in previous seasons but do include all commitments made from 1st July 2004 to 30th June 2005.

ClubTransfersUpdated ContractsCancelled ContractsLoansTotalAmount
.......
Leeds252271569£1,896,688
Leicester23019951£611,325
Wolves1675533£423,625
Sunderland983525£329,860
QPR29613957£320,935
Sheffield Utd26111644£315,000
Preston13106938£296,500
Stoke11831234£295,000
Nott'm Forest182121042£282,000
West Ham2422634£277,319
Reading1078227£271,450
Derby12713537£270,500
Burnley15611335£211,000
Wigan641718£210,000
Cardiff797932£157,500
Ipswich96101035£155,000
Plymouth1179635£153,000
Millwall6771434£140,000
Coventry161152254£75,000
Rotherham931720£47,166
Brighton141261244£45,595
Gillingham733821£32,000
Watford11871137£9,500
Crewe1568534£0