NLP says...

Are agents really worth the big fees?

GIVEN that football is wealthier than ever, it’s perhaps unsurprising that players’ representatives or agents are being paid record amounts. Players get bigger and bigger wages, therefore agents get bigger and bigger fees. Makes sense.

Figures released by The FA on Friday revealed that the amount paid by English clubs to agents rose 38 per cent last year with Premier League clubs alone parting company with a huge £174 million.

But it was the amounts paid by clubs from the National League and below which turned heads here at NLP HQ and stoked debate as to whether agents are worth their money at this level of the game.

Forest Green Rovers obviously think so. Of the £271,065 paid in total by Non-League clubs, they shelled out a whopping £174,613 of it, more in fact than Burton Albion in the Championship. So, what did they get for their money. Well, some good players undoubtedly, but that £174,613 will only be money well spent if bigspending Rovers finally make it into the Football League this season.

In my view, my old friends down at Aldershot Town have got the balance right. They are a club who run a tight ship for a reason and agents fees in the EBB boardroom are seen as a wasted resource. Just £56 exchanged hands between club and player representatives last year. How they got to that figure I’ll never know, but it is proof that they don’t care too much for intermediaries in north-east Hampshire.

Chairman Shahid Azeem, a close personal friend, tells me that nearly all footballers at National League level have agents these days – a far cry from the late 1990s to early 2000s when Non-League players with agents were seen almost as ‘Big Time Charlies’.

I remember George Borg having more than the odd run-in with agents in years gone by at a time when the Non-League market was untapped and enticing for the growing number of players’ representatives looking to find that little gem and propel him into the big time, for big money!

More often than not, agents will take their fees from the player themselves, at around 10 to 25 per cent of their salary but, with that, comes services such as offering financial and day-today advice and exit strategies for when they finish playing.

I’ve heard one story of a former Woking player on £50-a-week, paying an agent £20. He clearly saw that as money well spent.

Agents haven’t always had the best reputation in the game but, for me, they are often misunderstood. As Gareth Bale’s agent Jonathan Barnett explained, the more reputable representatives act more as traders and brokers in transfer deals as opposed to running around from club to club trying to sell their players to the highest bidder.

They genuinely have the players’ interests at heart and that’s why they are so prevalent in today’s game. Everything has its price.