By Albatross
July 22 2005

Football Agents are not exactly popular people with fans, or with many Club Chairmen for that matter. The latest figures released by the Football League show that plenty of them are prepared to bite their tongue and pay them though; Hartlepool United were one of the lowest spenders in the division.

The figures for the whole season 2004/5 (from The Football League Website) reveal that Pools payed out a total of £5K to agents, out of a total of just under 600K across the division. That's not too bad going when you look at our activity in getting players to agree new deals as well as signing up existing players, although it's not the lowest in the division.

In fact, five clubs - Blackpool, Colchester, Huddersfield, stockport and Wrexham - payed out nothing at all, while Bournemouth (3K), Chesterfield (4.6K) and Torquay (2.5K) spent less and Walsall matched us.

At the other end of the spectrum, Hull paid out not much short of £100K, Sheffield Wednesday topped 90K, and Bristol City forked out just over £85K. One surprise to me was that MK Dons also paid out more than £50K to agents - you wonder who is getting value for money when they paid out ten times what we did and avoided relegation by the narrowest of margins.

If we do win promotion this season though, the numbers indicate that it's a whole new ball game for agents - to the detriment of the clubs in my opinion. Leeds United spent just short of £1.9million on agents last season; all but five of the clubs in Division 1 spent six figure sums. Hodcroft has made no secret of his dislike of agents - although clearly he will deal with them if forced to - but there are some signs of hope: Crewe didn't spend a penny on agents fees last season, while Watford spent less than £10,000. It can be done.