Agents - The rotten heart of football
Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 11:22 pmReports 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, 
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,