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keelansgrandad

Premier League: Clubs increase spending to £260m on football agents in 2018-19

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If clubs are prepared to pay it, agents will be prepared to ask for it. 

If clubs started saying no, and then being honest with fans about why they are not signing a player or a renewing a contract - saying the agent is asking for too much money, you’d see a quick drop off on agent fees as players would start to tell their own agents to reduce the fees due. 

Players obviously need good representation, clubs have been all to happy to take advantage of young players or players who aren’t the smartest guys in the past - so the clubs aren’t blameless for the rise of agents. 

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Players obviously need good representation

Isn't that what the PFA should be doing BYG? It seems to me that agents are a way around regulations such as tapping up players.

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41 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

If clubs are prepared to pay it, agents will be prepared to ask for it. 

If clubs started saying no, and then being honest with fans about why they are not signing a player or a renewing a contract - saying the agent is asking for too much money, you’d see a quick drop off on agent fees as players would start to tell their own agents to reduce the fees due. 

Players obviously need good representation, clubs have been all to happy to take advantage of young players or players who aren’t the smartest guys in the past - so the clubs aren’t blameless for the rise of agents. 

Would players push back on agents? Quite a few on the continent seem to have surrendered their career to their agents and just go where they are told.

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1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Players obviously need good representation

Isn't that what the PFA should be doing BYG? It seems to me that agents are a way around regulations such as tapping up players.

Ask players how they feel about the PFA and you’ll soon find out why they hire their own agents. 

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1 hour ago, king canary said:

Would players push back on agents? Quite a few on the continent seem to have surrendered their career to their agents and just go where they are told.

Some would and some wouldn’t - that is up to the player. 

A good agent will not only get a player more money, but will get them into better clubs through running smart PR but also acting as a good salesman. When Fabregas was leaving Barcelona his agent employed a stats company to produce loads of data about why Fabregas was still a great player despite some negative press. It helped earn him a move to Chelsea. 

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12 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Ask players how they feel about the PFA and you’ll soon find out why they hire their own agents. 

Okay BYG, I've been a long term opponent of the role of agents in football, primarily you have to ask how many agents recycle their earnings back into the game -f all as far as I am aware but happy to be proved wrong?  This diversion of cash away from the game just leads to lack of progress in the game as a whole and weakens efforts to reconnect the ordinary fan and provide investment and support of grass roots (my sons team continue to play on shocking, leg breaking, pitches for example). 

However having been a champion of the PFA, I now recognise under Taylor they have become a moribund outdated organisation.  Now Taylor is finally on his way out, can improvements at that organisation be a real game changer?

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10 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

Some would and some wouldn’t - that is up to the player. 

A good agent will not only get a player more money, but will get them into better clubs through running smart PR but also acting as a good salesman. When Fabregas was leaving Barcelona his agent employed a stats company to produce loads of data about why Fabregas was still a great player despite some negative press. It helped earn him a move to Chelsea. 

I get the point of a good agent. I just think some players have handed over too much power to them and rather than the agent helping the player to get what he wants from his career it is the player who does what the agent wants. Hence Champions League level players turning out for Wolves in the Championship or even Sala being pushed into a move to Cardiff.

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Just now, shefcanary said:

Okay BYG, I've been a long term opponent of the role of agents in football, primarily you have to ask how many agents recycle their earnings back into the game -f all as far as I am aware but happy to be proved wrong?  This diversion of cash away from the game just leads to lack of progress in the game as a whole and weakens efforts to reconnect the ordinary fan and provide investment and support of grass roots (my sons team continue to play on shocking, leg breaking, pitches for example). 

However having been a champion of the PFA, I now recognise under Taylor they have become a moribund outdated organisation.  Now Taylor is finally on his way out, can improvements at that organisation be a real game changer?

It isn't players jobs to invest money back into the game and if agents didn't exist I'd imagine those fees would just line owners pockets.

The secret footballer wrote a good bit on why players need agents.

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1 minute ago, king canary said:

It isn't players jobs to invest money back into the game and if agents didn't exist I'd imagine those fees would just line owners pockets.

The secret footballer wrote a good bit on why players need agents.

I wasn't saying the players should invest, just saying more of agents fees could remain with clubs and that would encourage the clubs to support local grass roots more (a la CSF type initiatives - the Nest for instance - clubs could do more of these type of initiatives although I accept success on the pitch outweighs such priorities).

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1 hour ago, shefcanary said:

I wasn't saying the players should invest, just saying more of agents fees could remain with clubs and that would encourage the clubs to support local grass roots more (a la CSF type initiatives - the Nest for instance - clubs could do more of these type of initiatives although I accept success on the pitch outweighs such priorities).

Clubs have more than enough money already, but they will just always prioritise putting their money onto the pitch. Which includes them paying agents large sums to secure players/contracts. Every time broadcast deals get larger, clubs pay larger fees and wages. If agents didn’t get big fees it would just mean fees get larger or wages. 

Relying on clubs to improve grassroots will never work, that must come from the leagues, FA and government. Implement a 1% transfer tax to register a transfer and the FA will soon have enough money to gold plate every pitch (although that might not actually help).  

43 minutes ago, SwindonCanary said:

If agents are working for the benefit of the players, shouldn't it be the players that pay them ?

Clubs will ask agents to find them players, so agents work for both players or clubs. Which is stupid and clubs shouldn’t do this but clubs are generally a bit stupid.

Players will also pay agents, but usually negotiate that payment to come from the club via a bonus. 

Players hold the power (which I think is ultimately correct). 

1 hour ago, king canary said:

I get the point of a good agent. I just think some players have handed over too much power to them and rather than the agent helping the player to get what he wants from his career it is the player who does what the agent wants. Hence Champions League level players turning out for Wolves in the Championship or even Sala being pushed into a move to Cardiff.

It is hard to judge from the outside. Lots of players will have had the same agent from a very young age and trust them a lot. How much Neves and Jota were pushed into going to Wolves is hard to tell, they didn’t lose any money in that move and it will probably enhance their reputations in the long run. 

 

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Still nowhere near convinced BYG.

On one hand you are partly blaming the clubs for some sort of exploitation of players, particularly younger ones but allude to some form of false representation of Fabregas by his agent. I know you said his agent produced stats but they are meaningless in the greater scheme of things.

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1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Still nowhere near convinced BYG.

On one hand you are partly blaming the clubs for some sort of exploitation of players, particularly younger ones but allude to some form of false representation of Fabregas by his agent. I know you said his agent produced stats but they are meaningless in the greater scheme of things.

Tell Norwich City stats are useless when they used them to identify Buendia, and have a whole department whose job it is to analysis stats. 

It wasn’t ‘misinformation’ produced by the analytics company for the agent, it was just something to show the club to prove his worth to the team. 

I’m not saying all agents are brilliant, like any industry you get good ones and bad ones. The ‘bad’ ones don’t usually last too long as players don’t want a ‘bad’ agent. 

I can see why fans don’t like agents and why clubs like to spread the information that agents are bad guys. But in my opinion most clubs are no better than agents and would happy exploit their players if they had the chance. Until the Bosman ruling clubs would block players from moving clubs, even when they weren’t paying them or had a contract with them - that is proper explotation. 

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Tell Norwich City stats are useless when they used them to identify Buendia, and have a whole department whose job it is to analysis stats.

So we didn't go and watch him?

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1 hour ago, keelansgrandad said:

Tell Norwich City stats are useless when they used them to identify Buendia, and have a whole department whose job it is to analysis stats.

So we didn't go and watch him?

 Of course Norwich sent scouts, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a club not doing physical scouting to sign a player. But Norwich scouts went to watch Buendia because they identified his talent through statistical analysis. How else do you think clubs identify players to go and watch? 

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How else do you think clubs identify players to go and watch? 

Agents?:classic_biggrin:

No, I didn't know they sat through piles of stats which no doubt you will argue are so important but which to me seem meaningless if we did the same with RVW.

I believe it is only recently that we have had anything that resembles a European scouting network. And scouting is the way players used to be identified.

 

Edited by keelansgrandad

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5 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

And scouting is the way players used to be identified.

 

As Bethnal said, we're using statistics to identify who is worth watching in the first place, and then watching them several times in person to see if they're any good. There's no point sending scouts to a watch a team getting relegated from the Spanish second tier otherwise.

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33 minutes ago, Bethnal Yellow and Green said:

 Of course Norwich sent scouts, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a club not doing physical scouting to sign a player. 

... I  don't think Southampton went to watch George Weah's cousin before they signed him  🤣

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Harry Redknapp said he signed Marco Boogers because of a highlights video, which must be true, there's no way money would have ended up in his dogs bank account.

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14 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

But like I mentioned Icecream, if we used that for identifying RVW, then what went wrong?

We didn't, we just employed scouts who didn't realise he didn't have the physicality to make it in the English game.

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39 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

How else do you think clubs identify players to go and watch? 

Agents?:classic_biggrin:

No, I didn't know they sat through piles of stats which no doubt you will argue are so important but which to me seem meaningless if we did the same with RVW.

I believe it is only recently that we have had anything that resembles a European scouting network. And scouting is the way players used to be identified.

 

Clubs literally employ departments of people to analyse data and statistics. But you, random man on the internet, has decided they are meaningless.

Who to trust...?

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