Jut how much football clubs have to pay out to agent's has been revealed and it makes shocking reading and shows that you cannot just judge how much a club has spent in the transfer market by the actual transfer fee itself.
In the period February 1st 2020 & February 1st this year Saints spent almost £7 million on agents fees, despite the fact that transfer's were down in terms of both fee's and numbers due to the current Covid 19 issues.
The figure of £6,804,154 is down just more than £96,000 on the amount of £6,900,365 spent in the previous 12 months between February 1, 2019 and January 31, 2020.
Saints brought in Kyle Walker-Peters, Mohammed Salisu and Ibrahima Diallo on permanent deals over the summer, as well as the loan acquisition of Theo Walcott and then in January Takumi Minamino.
But agents fees are not just for transfers and the club also renewed contracts for number of the playing squad and some of those involved agents fees.
This perhaps shows how agents rule the game nowadays and just how much they earn and take out of it and why it is in their interest to move their clients on from club to club to generate income for the agent.
In terms of the Premier League Only West Bromwich Albion (£4.2m), Burnley (£4.5m) and Crystal Palace (£6.7m) spent less than Saints on agents’ fees over the 12-month period in the top-flight.
At the top end of the scale Chelsea were the biggest Premier League spenders. They invested heavily last summer and brought in Timo Werner, Kai Havertz and Ben Chilwell among others and spent £35,247,822 on agents’ fees.
Manchester City were the next highest spenders with £30,174,615, while their neighbours Manchester United spent slightly less — £29,801,555.
This shows just what Saints are up against, the top clubs can spend more than Saints or most Premier League clubs on agents fees alone let alone the transfer fee itself.
In total, Premier League clubs spent £272,220,223 on such fees, despite clubs suffering major losses due to the coronavirus pandemic.
That shows the problem in football, agents are costing clubs £272 million in the Premier League alone, that is more than most of the Premier league clubs actually turnover individually.
The gap between the Premier League and the other three divisions below is emphasised by the fact that Championship clubs spent only £40 million, an average of only £166k per club compared to £2 million per club in the Premier League.
In League 1 the gap was widened with a total of £3.08 million spent, our friends from the East End of the M27 were 7th highest spenders with just £157k forked out.
In the lower leagues spending on agents fees was actually down on the previous 12 month period, but in the Premier League it has increased, showing that despite a reduction in transfers and a global pandemic, the agents are not suffering a drop in business.
The obscene amounts being spent by the so called Big Six clubs shows the gap between them and the rest of the clubs and how they are getting richer as the rest struggle and have the misapprehension that spending £100 million on transfers would automatically propel us into the top six, the reality is it would barely touch the sides.
For me the sooner that the Big Six break away from the Premier League and form a European Super League the better, when they do the rest of us have to stand firm and turn the Premier League into a competitive competition, not being able to watch the big stars come to down would be a small price to pay for the chance to actually have a chance of winning something and to bring some sanity back to the game.