More money going out of football

Last updated : 13 January 2006 By Tony Scholes

Mike Newell - had much to say this week

Newell has certainly shaken some feathers with his allegations of being offered payments for transfers and the FA have reacted with Chief Executive Brian Barwick saying, “These are very serious claims that Mike Newell has made. We welcome the fact that he has said he is willing to provide names and details of people who have breached the rules.”

Today former Everton and Wales defender Kevin Ratcliffe has backed up Newell’s claims, referring to offers when he was at Shrewsbury and whilst all that was going on the Football League published their latest figures on payments to agents covering July to December last year.

The good news in the Championship is that, compared to 2004, there were more transfer deals with less of them using agents and less money in total paid to agents. The bad news is that almost £3.75 million has once again gone out of the game from Championship clubs.

Burnley paid out a lot more in 2005 than they did in 2004. The total in 2004 was £67,000 but the recent figure takes our payments in 2005 to over £370,000. These are all legitimate payments to agents that will again horrify football supporters as they see their money fast disappearing out of football.

Leeds top the list whilst Crewe can take a bow again for not paying agents a single penny, something they are loathe to do. They were even prepared to miss out on a player recently because of their refusal to pay an agents fee.

The full list for the Championship is shown below:

Club	New Regs	Updated Contracts	New Contracts	Loans	Total Trans	Fees Paid
.
Leeds	19	4	5	4	32	£576,800
Norwich	10	4	2	11	27	£438,000
Leicester	24	2	1	4	31	£300,990
Southampton	21	0	7	3	31	£275,000
Brighton	12	3	1	10	26	£255,000
Watford	18	3	5	7	33	£191,530
Reading	16	6	4	6	32	£185,000
Sheffield Utd	21	13	0	5	39	£183,000
Burnley	18	0	0	9	27	£163,910
Cardiff	21	10	1	2	34	£155,000
Wolves	10	6	1	4	21	£153,334
QPR	16	1	1	3	21	£131,600
Ipswich	12	5	0	7	24	£110,242
Coventry	11	12	3	10	36	£105,250
Crystal Palace	10	2	2	0	14	£100,000
Luton	6	8	0	0	14	£92,000
Preston	10	6	0	3	19	£80,300
Stoke	14	7	1	7	29	£59,355
Derby	10	2	2	21	35	£58,500
Sheffield Wed	19	6	1	6	32	£51,500
Plymouth	10	2	3	3	18	£38,575
Hull	6	9	3	10	28	£22,000
Millwall	8	4	4	17	33	£15,000
Crewe	7	3	0	11	21	£0