The Premier League reveals that £77,003,130 was paid to agents over the last two transfer windows. Manchester City paid the most (£10,537,982) followed by Liverpool (£8,600,444). Southampton (£646,106) paid the least.
Full table pinched from the Fail 1. Man City £10,537,982 2. Liverpool £8,600,444 3. QPR £6,818,688 4. Tottenham £6,595,905 5. Chelsea £6,490,382 6. Arsenal £5,580,873 7. West Ham Utd £4,436,992 8. Manchester Utd £3,681,580 9. Newcastle Utd £3,485,503 10. Everton £3,092,891 11. Aston Villa £2,730,539 12. Fulham £2,581,208 13. Sunderland £2,173,762 14. Reading £2,167,833 15. Wigan Athletic £1,974,305 16. Stoke City £1,717,266 17. West Brom £1,341,301 18. Norwich City £1,248,725 19. Swansea City £1,100,845 20. Southampton £646,106 TOTAL................... £77,003,130
Haven't seen the whole list (anyone have a link?) but we paid the least of any premier league club in the last year at £646k. This compares favourably with for example QPR who spent £6.8m in the same period, the third highest amount! I guess we have something to thank Cortese for here; of the other promoted teams West Ham paid £4.4m and Reading £2.1m.
The impressive thing is that we're bottom by a fairly big margin. There is around £450,000 between ourselves and Swansea and we spent a lot more than them. Very good Cortese.
Indeed, & for that I salute him. Might well miss out on some one season wonder gold digging pacy centre back, but we'll be alright in the long run.
Full list on other thread. I know it was reported that agents hated dealing with Nicola and Cortese-haters took that as a criticism of him. So well done, NC.
Is this going to make it more difficult to sign players? Will agents do whatever they can to encourage their clients to go elsewhere?
Well we missed out on Buttner because NC wouldn't cough up a fee he wasn't aware of. Might have been good to sign him, but no one is bigger than SFC (but I am biased).
It might already be having that effect, but I'd rather be where we are than where spending fortunes on agents.
I really don't think it is a criticism of Cortese - agents are one of the worst parts of football, everyone knows this. You'll never hear a football manager talk about how much they love agents (except Redknapp, but that's because of his pocket lining)
I merged all the posts.......mostly as a test to see if it would actually work. It went a bit funny, sorry.