Scunthorpe United pay Most in League 2 For Agents Fees
Scunthorpe United’s Lincolnshire rivals Lincoln City and Grimsby Town will find the tenth Football League Agents’ Fees Report interesting reading. Imps still ponder the mystery fee for Boyce, now on loan at the Mariners and can at least take solace from the fact that our now richer county rivals appear to be paying through the nose.
The report below includes the Championship, League One and League 2 clubs.
Thanks for reading STMI
Eleven clubs spent under ten thousand, three of which refused to part with a penny despite accomplishing 87 transactions. A round of applause please for Accrington, AFC Wimbledon and Hartlepool, Jeff Stellings imperious monkeyhangers. This was almost a tenth of the 907 transactions. Certainly necessity is the mother of invention, but League 2 did half the transactions of League One at a quarter of the cost. With Scunthorpe gone this season and Portsmouth now out of the jaws of financial despair, it will be slim pickings this year in League 2.
The League One Clubs Agent’s fees bill came to £2.4 millions last year with three clubs making up half of the total. Perhaps it is a sign of the new TV deal’s increasing polarisation of the game, or common sense on the part of the clubs. In reality with over a thousand players looking for work (and rising) it is probably a well overdue return to the principles of supply and demand.
No surprise that Wolverhampton Wanderer’s parted with £571,350, largely getting rid of the Premiership hangover it has to be said. Bristol City another big club falling upon hard times spent £339,467 but Brentford in third continues their ambition climb through the Divisions. The Bees were stung for £253,236 according to the Football League report ending 2013. The division saw 1076 transactions including 385 transfers and 356 loans.
The shrewd shrews certainly lived up to their name spending nothing. No surprises that Crewe, with an enviable youth set up that provides a conveyor belt of talent, spent £6,066. Walsall spent just a monkey more (£500) with Carlisle also putting under ten grand in the agents hands.
Go on make it part of your Saturday football experience!
Download the PDF of the full report here
Posted on August 29, 2014, in Uncategorized and tagged Football League Agents report 2013/14, Grimsby Town, Scunthorpe United. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
savethemightyimps 
SUFC have responded with the following on the Iron-Bru to answer why the fees were so high. Very good of them and it puts a different perspective on the figures.
“Hopefully this will shed some light on the figures because they are a little misleading.
The main reason for this is that the report shows what we have committed to spend on agent fees in the 2013/14 season and not what we have actually paid out for that period.
So for example if you signed a player on a two-year contract and agreed to pay his agent £5,000 in the 2013/14 season and £5,000 in the 2014/15 season the report would show £10,000 in 2013/14. The same principle would apply for longer contracts and we had four players who signed contracts longer than two years in January when the trend in League 2 is for shorter contracts.
The second reason our figures appear high and the main reason. Is that 11 of our contract renewals for the 2014/15 season and beyond were done in the reporting period for 2013/14 which runs from 1st July 2013 to 30th June 2014. To give a specific example if a player signed a new contract in May 2014 for the 2014/15 and 2015/16 season then any agents fees paid over the duration of that contract would be shown in the 2013/14 reporting period. The trend is for clubs to start their new contracts from 1st July in the relevant year but this summer we were keen to get players signed up and set them a deadline to accept our offers. They all signed new contracts with their old terms applying to the 30th June 2014 and their new terms starting in 1st July 2014 but any agent fees due over the length of the new contract are shown in the report for 2013/14.
Given this the current position is that the agent fees for the reporting period 2014/15 will be greatly reduced.”
Thank you for that