The figures between February 2023 and February 2024 reveal a fairly large slice of money being paid out to agents by Championship clubs. We’ve covered agents and intermediaries on numerous occasions before, and have built some very healthy and beneficial relationships as a result.

Some represent Swans players, but in general across the board they look after the interests of thousands of players. The figures for the relegated clubs last season - The most eye-popping figures highlight the discrepancy between the freshly-relegated clubs and the rest. Between them, Leeds United (£13.288m), Leicester, despite their struggles to stay on the right side of the rules (£8.114m), and Southampton (£7.537m) spent nearly as much (£29m) as the other 21 clubs in the Championship division combined (£32.4m). Watford, Norwich, West Bromwich Albion and Hull also outspent Stoke. Rotherham paid the lowest amount (£441,000) while promoted duo Plymouth (£587,000) and Sheffield Wednesday (£509,000) were also in the lowest three spenders. In even sharper contrast, a total £410m was spent on agent fees by Premier League clubs. Source: Yahoo News

It’s a lot of money, but what can Swansea City do ?

Ronald, Josh Tymon, Josh Key (still to be finalised) and Josh Ginnelly ( grounded before he could get going) are the more successful signings over this period. The rest though all came with agents fee’s. Jerry Yates handles by New Era Global and Mykola Kukharevych, Pro Star were significant signings. Bar Ronald these two players commanded the biggest agent invoices. The fact is Swansea City cannot operate without employing agents (not so common these days for the club) to find players or deal with them for every signature they want. It’s a fact of life.

Speaking to a source close to the business of handling agents and who was an intermediary for many years, he tells us it’s impossible to operate without paying agents. “The days of players handling their own business is very much in the past. Agents are not only the lifeblood in some circumstances they are also the most difficult to manage. Yannick Bolasie is a point in case, I know your relationship with Yannick and his agent has been very healthy, but he too would have come with quite large expenses. You just cannot get round it”

The more players you sign, and that includes loans, the more money you spend, and the deficit shows up in yearly accounts. The Swans in the Premier League spent extortionate amounts of money but not by comparison to the top six. These amounts will clearly annoy some, and others won’t really care. In our case we see it as a lesson learned for this seasons management of the club, which hasn’t been clever at times. We see the reasons, and aim no criticism at the club whatsoever. Ronald’s signing came with numerous issues, and a fairly big agents fee. What can make it cheaper or easier is if the player wants to go to a particular club. Then, some of the costs can be put on the player by the agent, it seems at times the last people involved are the buying club. And of course there are signing on fee’s, salaries and incidentals like appearances, bonuses and endorsements. All on top of the fee and the agents fee. Ronald is a good example.

This figure doesn’t surprise us, but we hear of club losses per month, and those are operating losses apparently, based upon incomings and outgoings from daily business. Not reflective of the financial status of the overall business. A review for another day most certainly.

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Artwork by Swansea Independent

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