Liverpool FC Forum

[JBG]

Reports today indicate that Roman Abramavich has sanctioned a British transfer record fee of £36m and wages of £120,000 a week to secure the services of Steven Gerrard.

Roman is feeling generous as his personal wealth has grown in recent months due to the high price of oil on the world markets, and he himself has made a lot of money as his oil company has played a part in increasing output to meet the sharp rise in demand for oil following the troubles in the Middle East.

Gerrard goes to Chelsea and breaks all our hearts, but at least we will have £36m to spend on new players?

Wrong.

Gerrard's agent and Chelsea's intermediary will stand to make anywhere between £2m and £6m between them from the deal.

Therefore, if the papers report the deal as costing £36m, in reality Liverpool could only receive £30m from the deal.

Shocking to think about, but at least we'd have £30m left over from the Gerrard deal to spend on transfers......

Wrong again.

Gerrard is reported to earn £60,000 a week at Liverpool under his last contract signed last winter. This effectively earns him between £3m-£3.5m a year at Liverpool when bonuses are taken into account. So, for a four year deal, Gerrard would have cost us around £12m-£13.5m.

Selling Gerrard would mean saving on his wages, and over the 4 years selling him would be worth around £42m to Liverpool.

However, if Benetiz buys three new players at £10m each with the Gerrard cash and these cost us £40-50,000 a week in wages, (averaging £2m a year each over four years), the cost of signing these players and keeping them for 4 years would cost us around £52m.

That leaves us with a shortfall of around £10m from the Gerrard deal.

Fair enough, we'd get three £10m players in return for Gerrard, but if any of those players flopped then we'd be in serious trouble.

So the board is faced with the reality that if we are even to stand still financially after the Gerrard transfer, we could probably only use his transfer fee and savings on wages to secure 2 £10m players and maybe one £5m player on roughly half their wages. Those 3 signings would amount to £25m on transfer fees: an impressive amount, but a good deal short of the £36m.

The problem with agents has simply gone too far. I'm not denying that the Gerrard transfer (if it happens!) will be a massive deal, but is a couple of weeks of Chinese whispers and a few hours of behind closed doors haggling really worth millions: the kind of money both agents could easily retire on.

If I were a suspicious person (which I'm not    ) I'd say that certain parties have been putting ideas into young Stevie's head the last few weeks, 

[supersub]

that's for sure and the London biased media have happily played their part too.

[Woollyback]

This is the acid-test for Liverpool Football Club. Are we still a big club or are we now at the mercy of the big boys? A depressing question.

I spoke to Ron Yeats about this very topic at a recent event and he is confident Stevie will stay but if he wants to go then we should put a price tag of at least £50m on him.

Let's test that c**t Abramovich's mettle.

[Starbridge42]

Agreed if Abromovich wants Gerrard he'll have to pay through his stumpy Russian nose.  If he wants Gerrard we'll fight him tooth and nail.

[anfieldadorer]

Yes, it shouldn't be as easy as saying "Abrakadabramovich" to get Gerrard.

[supersub]

SG's agents will be crying in their prawn cocktails after losing out on a nice big slice of a chelsea signing on fee...hahahahhahhahhahhahhahah

[JBG]

Wenger has recently slammed agents for unsettling Vieira. Unfortunately for Arsenal, it looks like they are going to get their way and make a lot of money off the back of a Vieira move.

I wonder how much of Abramovich's £200m plus that he has spent in the past 12 months has found its way into agents' pockets?

[stmichael]

what i don't agree with is clubs paying agents. in an age when a lot of fans are getting priced out of football by increasing prices it must make them sick to the bone to find out that clubs are paying agents.

[JBG]

Some agents can make over £200,000 sometimes for a minor international transfer from the likes of Denmark to England for a second rate Danish international squad player that costs only £400,000 in transfer fees.

Tomas Linderoth left the Bluenoses last week for £1m but I guarantee you Everton will only see about £600,000 to £700,000 of that money.

Thats a shocking loss of capital from the game and its all spent by agents on villas and boats in the south of France.

If Rooney left the Bluenoses, to say, the Scum, for around £30m (likely closer to £25m), all the agents involved would get about £4-6m between them.

No wonder there has been so much transfer speculation over the likes of Gerrard, Vieira, RVN and Rooney this summer: agents engineer the move to get themselves massive fees.

I think Roy Keane and Damien Duff are part of only a small bunch where their agents are really family advisers rather than "superagents". Duff's agent is a family friend who happens to be a football manager of a League of Ireland club, while Keane's agent is his solicitor. I think that Bolo Zenden's agent is his father, and Ronaldo (of Scum) has his mother handling his affairs!

There will be a day of reckoning yet as far as agents and greedy footballers go, Rick Parry said as much last week, saying that the club won't be held ransom by agents or players anymore, and that in 2 or 3 years time the tables will be turned and will be begging clubs to sign them, not the other way around.

Its already happening: Steve Guppy is paying for all his own travel and hotel expenses while he is on trial at Leeds.

[LFC #1]

good to hear about Parry and what have you JBG. It's sad that football has become such a money obsessed sport.

[JBG]

There was an independent financial study published yesterday in which it was found that total expenditure in England on transfer and wages decreased for the first time in the history of the Premiership in 2003/03.

That figure should fall further last season as a lot of teams tightened their belt, with the obvious exception of Chelsea.

The signs are that, with a few exceptions, power is returning to clubs and away from players and their agents.

[blind]

morning guys just back from sunny Hawaii. (i got a season ticket the wife got a holiday fair swap hay.)

the problem is our transfer system if we adopted a more american approach by having no actual fee and that transfers where done on player swappes and the pick of the young players and any fees involved are onlyu ever buy out fees for contracts if no suitable players where wanted in return. Yes salaries are very high. with some players earning over £10 million per season but it is done on a sliding scale.

The russian Ice hockey player who was dating Kornicover was on £15 mil for the fist season but then the remaining 6 years of his contract he was on £3 million.

the agents in football get a kick back from the fee and the salery negosiations. and there are usually several involved in a move which is silly as you should only ever haver 1 agent the players not 1 for the player ,1 for the club he is going to and 1 for the club that is selling,ala man u and chelsea using that "super Agent" the clubs CEO's and legal department should sort out the fees between the clubs and then once that is done the ceo and layers sit down with the plyer theyu are buying and talk to him and his personal agent then deal done. Not a case of £ agents bumping the prices up so they can all get a nice hefty bit of commission off both clubs.

if fifa wanted to stamp out the malpractice of agents they could very easily but they are the ones who greese the palms of thye fifa board and so there will never be a significant change.

[stapo1000]

Benitez announced that Owen's agent was the cause for his switch to Real. Owen had been happy at the club and then his agent started talking to real. if it hadn't been for his agent, owen would probably still be a liverpool player

[JBG]

I think the Owen transfer involved a good deal of brinksmanship between Owen, Liverpool, Owen's agent and Real Madrid.

Liverpool had to take action and prevent a repeat of the McMannaman situation.

[lakes10]

sadley we do need Agents, some teams can stay playing football due to the fact that the Agents and sell there young players for a good price , look at southend over the last 15 years most of there incoome has come from traing up young kids to a good stage then selling them to pay there bills