It was announced yesterday that Liverpool had spent £9million in fees to agents over the last year, second only to Chelsea in the Premier League in the highest amount given to player’s representatives. At lot of this was down to the amount of dealings that Liverpool were involved with over the summer. The arrival of Roy Hodgson as manager led to a clear out of players, with agents being paid to find clubs for some of the Reds’ unwanted stars. Agent fees are involved in signing players, selling players, signing contracts and even when players are sent out on loan. Liverpool have certainly done a lot of all four over the last year.
IN: Maxi Rodriguez, Jonjo Shelvey, Milan Jovanovic, Joe Cole, Danny Wilson, Christian Poulsen, Brad Jones, Raul Meireles and Paul Konchesky.
OUT: Andrea Dossena, Andrei Voronin, Christopher Buchtmann, Yossi Benayoun, Alberto Riera, Krisztian Nemeth, Diego Cavalieri, Javier Mascherano, Alex Kacaniklic, Lauri Dalla Valle and Damien Plessis.
LOAN: Philipp Degen, Alberto Aquilani, Emiliano Insua and Nabil El-Zhar.
Each of these deals will have involved an agent down the line, but it is the scale of the use of agents that is worrying. While Manchester City slashed their agent fees by 54% down to £5.9milllion despite spending over £130million in the transfer market over the same period, Liverpool spent and sold dramatically less but spent £3.1million more. How is this possible? In Liverpool’s case, such a high amount can be put partly down to Joe Cole. It is rumoured that the England international was given £3m-5m signing on fee, with certainly a good portion of that going to his agent. There is certainly no real “free” transfers these days.
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Lemmy and his band Motorhead at a French bar
This week it is former Liverpool WAG Claudine Keane.
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CLICK ON THE IMAGE OR HERE TO SEE CLAUDINE KEANE’S GALLERY
Nw Liverpool hve a central midfield trio in th likes of Gerrard, Lucas and Merieles . Lucas and Raul reminds me of Alonso and Masch. In 2007 season , if thy play consistenly , as of th wide areas its a problem maxi lacks speed and finishing while kuyt lacks speed and skil. Thy both r getting old. Bring 2 young pacey natural wingers in jan. And a complete striker under 25yrs shld b physical & versetile, And in summer transfer window bring a back up for steven Gerrard or bring Aqua bck. And for our defance its gona b solid bcoz our youngsters r real class act. Except in LB we got 2 gt rid of tht old guy. Give chris mavinga a chance he is a class.
@Jackson – Perhaps it’s just me, and English, as a language, has changed dramatically during my extended journey home tonight, but I honestly can’t understand half of what you’ve written. And the sad thing is, the bits that DO make sense, I agree with.