Cavani fees show the game has gone

IT turns out Andy and Judy are not the only Murrays who regularly talk sense.

This was Jamie taking to social media when news of Edinson Cavani’s imminent move to Manchester United broke.

“Imagine a football club having to pay 10mil to an agent to sign a player without a club. There’s so much that’s wrong about that. Game’s gone.”

The trouble is there are plenty in football who CAN imagine it.

Indeed, you do not have to imagine these figures. They are there for public consumption.

Amount spent by Premier League clubs on agents’ fees last season: £263,368,860.

Amount spent by Premier League clubs on agents’ fees for the season before last: £260,664,118.

And Covid or no Covid, there is no indication those nauseating numbers are going to be any easier to stomach this season.

Jorge Mendes, who seems to take players in and out of Wolves on a weekly basis, is estimated to have pocketed at least £20million in this window.

That will be a conservative estimate.

And whatever amount United finally agree to pay as commission in the

Cavani deal, it will be the sort of fortune that could probably save a dozen lower league clubs from going to the wall.

Of course, we know the equation isn’t that simple but there will be plenty of politicians who think it is.

There will be plenty pointing out that if that sort of money is swilling around and being taken out of the game by go-betweens, why should the game get help from the outside?

And that is why the Government has made it clear it expects the Premier League – and not Westminster – to come up with a financial package to support the rest of the game in this crisis.

Many in top-flight boardrooms are protesting they need to look after their own finances first.

Or maybe that the millions are better spent on lavishly weighing in an agent ‘to sign a player without a club’, as Murray pointed out.

Whichever way you look at it, the Cavani middle-man payment will be just another reminder that the money being paid to agents by Premier League clubs is simply obscene.

And if it carries on while lower league clubs gasp for financial air, there will be plenty joining Jamie in believing the game’s gone.