How much Premier League clubs paid to agents

Football agents, the mysterious figures skulking around the back of executive boxes with a phone sewn onto their ear, have never had it so good.

The gargantuan fees paid by Premier League clubs to agents and intermediaries has increased in each of the last seven years. However, the unrelenting uptick may have reached its apex after FIFA announced in January that the commissions agents receive for player transfer fees would be capped going forward.

However, those restrictions – which the world’s most prominent representatives are unsurprisingly contesting – were not drafted early enough to prevent England’s top-flight clubs from coughing up more than £300m combined on agents’ fees (almost double the figure from 2016, £174m).

Here’s the breakdown of how much each Premier League team had to fork out across the summer and winter windows of the 2022/23 season.

Data from the English Football Association

Manchester City top the chart with more than £51m going to various intermediaries this season. The reigning Premier League champions spent less on transfers than Wolverhampton Wanderers but the acquisition of Erling Haaland – for a paltry sum of £51.2m to Borussia Dortmund – came under the conditions of a hefty bonus for the striker’s representatives, with Rafaela Pimenta reportedly earning £34m from the deal.

Roughly speaking, for every £2.50 City spent on player fees this season, they have paid agents £1.00 – the highest ratio in the Premier League.

Chelsea have spent around 2.5 times more on transfer fees in this time period than any other club, yet the new hierarchy in west London has managed to limit the figures for agents to £43m. Manchester United, the only team other than Chelsea to exceed £200m in this season’s summer and winter windows, have spent almost half as much as the Blues on agents (£24m).

Liverpool have only signed five senior players this season yet rank third for fees paid to agents among England’s top flight. The sizeable sums which were required to lure Darwin Nunez (£64m) and Cody Gakpo (£40m) to Anfield likely account…