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CUT ABOVE? |
The latest Football League report on fees paid to agents – covering the second half of 2005 (July 1st to December 31st) - makes for interesting reading for Gasheads. The topline figure is that Football League clubs have paid over £4.4 million to agents over the last six months, which is more than half a million down on the same period last year but nevertheless a huge sum of money that is effectively going out of the game. Championship clubs accounted for 85% of all payments, but both Bristol clubs were relatively big spenders for their respective divisions. City’s total of £86,850 was beaten only by Notts Forest (£124,950) in League One while our own £29,000 topped the League Two league table and represented over 20% of all payments to agents in the basement division. On the face of it, we’ve improved on the corresponding period in 2004, when we spent £33,000 on agents’ fees, but it’s not quite that simple. The report for that period shows that the 2004 figure was generated via a total of 25 transactions: 17 new registrations/transfers, 2 updated contracts, 5 cancelled contracts and 1 loan deal. Most likely included within these transactions were the arrival of a large number of experienced players during the summer of 2004 on longish-term deals: Campbell, Elliott, Forrester, Gibb, Hinton, Hunt, Ryan, Trollope, Walker and Disley. With Rovers’ transfer activity during the course of last summer not nearly as prolific as it was in 2004, it was surely only to be expected that fees paid to agents would fall. In fact, you may have expected it to fall much further. The report for July-December 2005 that has just been published shows that the £29,000 figure was accumulated through a total of 23 transactions: 11 new registrations/transfers, 4 updated contracts, 2 cancelled contracts and 6 loan deals. Of this total, the only two significant new signings were Scott Shearer and Chris Carruthers, while Anderson, Lescott, Walker and of course Junior signed new deals – the latter financed in part by the Share Scheme. You could therefore argue that while the overall figure has come down, the sums paid to agents for each permanent deal have risen significantly. Finally, it’s interesting to see that Wycombe Wanderers were very active in the transfer market during the summer, acquiring the likes of Tommy Mooney and Rob Lee. According to the report they didn’t spend one penny on fees to agents. |