West Ham United paid out just over £14,000,000 in agent fees during the last two transfer windows newly released figures have revealed.
On Wednesday the annual list of agent fees were released by the FA and the results don’t make for great reading. Fairly recently the decision was made by the authorities that all agent fees paid by English clubs have to be made public for transparency reasons. These are fees paid to both agents and intermediaries and it is fairly common practice these days to pay agents to also help renew existing players contracts and even assist in moving players on, the latter is something I feel we might need to heavily rely on in the summer if we are to sell some inconsistent high earners that aren’t offering value for money.
West Ham were overall the 6th highest spenders amassing a staggering £14,414,845 on agent fees over the last 12 month from February 1 2018 to January 31 2019. In total Premiership clubs paid a staggering £260m to agents and intermediaries with Liverpool alone paying out close to £44m! with Chelsea and Man City making up the top three.
This is a huge drain on the sport and can’t be sustainable when the amount agents take from the game increases significantly each year, one thing is for sure West Ham certainly aren’t getting value for money from our dealings with agents currently, some might even say those who hold the purse strings are massively overpaying for inconstant or average players. I don’t think this is quite the top 6 fans wanted to break into especially now a bottom half finish is looking more and more likely.