Patrick Barclay
Much was made last week of the disclosure that the Treasury had spent £107
million of public money on advice from City lawyers and accountants on how
to deal with the financial crisis over the past two years. And rightly so;
there were questions to be addressed.
One concerned the amount: even if we allow an average rate of £1,000 an hour,
it means that we were paying, say, 100 supposed experts to devote 1,000
hours each, or more than half every working week, to a problem that was
always going to land in the politicians’ laps anyway.
Another asked what was the point of having a Treasury if it could not get
together with its counterparts in other countries and work out what to do at
a time of financial crisis, just as the Armed Forces are expected to deal,
in conjunction with allies, with the military crises that cause us just as
much consternation, if not more.
Meanwhile hardly an eyelid was batted at the disclosure that an even greater
sum — £71 million in just one year — had left the football industry in
grotesquely inflated fees to agents for services that, whatever the
stakeholders in this spurious trade might tell you, are simply not required.
Not for the first time, the contrast between the standards expected of the
custodians of public and private money was stark.
Yet what is happening in football is a very public scandal. The Premier
League’s calculation that £71 million went to intermediaries tallies with
one I made a year ago but is probably an underestimate because one club,
Hull City, suggest that the sum set against their name is only about half
the true figure.
This is the first time the Premier League has published club totals. The
Football League has been doing so for several years, and reporting sharp
reductions in money wasted, but, while Premier League officials are sincere
in hoping that their clubs will follow suit, the publication should be seen
in the grim context of a bad situation getting worse.
It is a consequence of a deal cut with the agents’ association last summer in
which the shoddy practice of "dual representation" — in which an agent is
allowed to act for both club and player in a transfer deal or contract
renegotiation — was called back from the seat in death row it so richly
deserved. Dual representation is, of course, anti-competitive, but thus far
no busybody has taken an interest; when you need one, they are never around.
No club should ever need an agent. If Manchester City, with their wealth of
inexperience, require advice on which players to sign, they should ask their
manager and, if he doesn’t know, find one who does, or can operate with a
knowledgeable director of football. It is more complicated and expensive —
City’s outlay on agents over the year was £13 million — only because clubs
make it so.
Agents need not be confined to a single club and this helps to drive up their
price. Yet transfers should all be done in-house. Most Premier League clubs
have chief executives on £500,000 to £1 million a year. For that sort of
money, they should be able to arrange a few transfers a year, if necessary
hiring lawyers and other specialists on a bespoke basis.
A particularly complicated deal involving image rights and so on might take
200 hours at £1,000 an hour — several times cheaper than many deals done
over the past few years.
So why, if agents are inimical to good business, do clubs use them? Because
they have become lazy. Rather than scout out talent, they wait for agents to
bring it, promising to ward off competition in exchange for a fat fee. That
is why agents love naively ambitious clubs. As soon as one is relegated and
skint, they move on to the next mug.
The FA, meanwhile, remains so supine in the face of this constant erosion of
the game’s finances — I need hardly remind you that £71 million would enable
the National Football Centre to be built in a year — as to suggest that all
hope of decent governance has disappeared into the bureaucracy.
So shamelessly cock-a-hoop have the agents’ association become that their
chairman, Mel Stein (star client: Paul Gascoigne) responded to last week’s
report by calling for his group to be incorporated on the FA Council. Where,
no doubt, they would represent players and clubs as well as themselves.
My old friend Jon Holmes, who helped with the careers of Gary Lineker and
other distinguished sportsmen, is a leading voice against what so much of
his profession has become, insisting that agents should work for their
individual clients alone.
They could be well enough paid for it, too, while avoiding any conflict of
interest. Clubs would make better decisions. There would be fewer deals that
leave supporters scratching their heads.
As it is, even no-brainers such as Emmanuel Adebayor’s transfer from Arsenal
to City involve the kind of commissions paid to Treasury advisers on
something a good deal more important than the movement of a footballer.
And yet the agent (another established figure, Jon Smith) tells us of
Adebayor: "It was not an easy deal as there were many people on the outside
trying to become involved, saying they could move him into this club or that
club."
This is the mess into which football has been allowed to sink, and supporters,
like taxpayers in the wider world, are paying for it.
Let the FA do its duty and banish agents from clubs. Then we shall all get
better value for money.
Debate: Do agents perform a useful function or should they be eradicated
from the sport?
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