PFA Pleased With New Rules Regarding Agents

[QPR Report]

PFA's Give Me Football

PFA pleased with new rules regarding agents
More transfer transparency can only be a good thing

By Dave Smith July 26, 2009

Gordon TaylorThe Premier League in future will agree to be more transparent about their payments to agents The PFA welcomes the introduction of new rules which forces Premier League clubs to be more transparent about their transfer dealings – and in particular their payments to agents.

Premier League clubs will now have to publish the amount they spend on agents’ fees for the first time, a move which follows Deloittes’ estimates that the total spending on agents’ fees stands at £60m.

Until now, no breakdown of individual club’s spending have been published, but this move brings the Premier League into line with the Football League, which publishes an annual league table of club spending on middlemen and brokers in the transfer market.

The Premier League accepted the move towards more transparency in return for an easing of the rules prohibiting the practice of ‘dual representation’ – whereby an agent can represent both the player and one of the clubs involved in the transfer.

Agents will now be permitted to act for more than one party in a transfer deal providing they have the consent of the player concerned.

The new rules, which came about after long negotiations between the Premier League and the FA, will come into force immediately.

PFA Chief Executive Gordon Taylor said: “It was great to have the FA Council meeting of the Football Association here in Manchester situated at the Midland Hotel, the scene of our Annual General Meeting.

“The business of the meeting was to cover a whole range of football issues. One in particular caused a great deal of subtle diplomacy when I was asked to help arrange a final draft with regard to New Agent Rules and to help bridge the gap between the Football Association and the Premier League. This we managed to do and reach agreement by the time the Council meeting started.

“In essence, the Premier League in future will agree to be more transparent about their payments to agents. It will be interesting to see if Deloittes’ estimates are correct and that they assess such amounts to be in the region of £60million.

“Until now no breakdown in individual clubs spending have been published but this move brings the Premier League in line with the Football League which publishes a table of club spending on middlemen in the transfer market.

“The Premier League found this acceptable in return for removal of the rule prohibiting the practice of dual representation whereby an agent can represent both the player and one of the clubs involved in the transfer.

“In reality, on so many occasions in the past, the previous rule was being breached and not followed. Agents will now be permitted to act for more than one party in a transfer deal providing they have the consent of the player concerned.

“This is particularly important to the PFA as there will be a form of informed consent necessary to be signed by the player where it is incumbent on the agent to inform him of all wage offers made for him by clubs, transfer fees and all payments offered to the agent.

“The previous rule caused agents to shift and shadow, one minute representing the club, the other representing the player and it is hoped that this practice of shifting and shadowing, which needed precise approval from the Football Association will now fall into disuse. The new rules reflect reality but they also demand the agents to fully explain all offers made by clubs.”

www.givemefootball.com/premier-league/pfa-pleased-with-new-rules-regarding-agents

[londonranger]

The rules are draconic, look at poor Luton. I found the entrance to what we paid on agents blocked by my computer. The financials of QPR are certainly nothing Im vitally interested in except the save the money syndrome and buy abroad makes me wonder what kind of agents deals can be done internationally. But since curiosity killed the cat, I will end this post.

[ingham]

Excellent.

Now they've admitted that the people involved in player deals routinely flout the rules when it suits them to do so, can we assume that the other people involved in these deals, chairmen, managers and the rest, treat ALL the rules designed to protect the Clubs' against exploitation with similar disdain.

Like the rules against kickbacks.

It is unlikely that the authorities can provide us with evidence that this doesn't happen. And as they now admit that the people under their jurisdiction routinely flout other rules and there's nothing the authorities can do about it, except to set aside the rules to suit the cheats, it must be safer to assume that Clubs like QPR and all the others with vast and in many cases inexplicable debts have incurred these staggering losses because the people supposedly representing the Club's interests AGAINST agents, players and managers are now shown to be working alongside these people to ensure that the Club PAYS OUT as much as possible on the deal.

Even paying the player's commission to his agent, so we're told.

Can the football authorities seriously believe that losing £3 million to £6 million a season of the Club's money at a small Club like QPR is, in practice, anything other than an exercise in lining everyone's pockets at the Club's expense.

Perhaps everyone concerned - players, agents, managers, investors - should be banned from the game - and the Club - for a year for every million pounds lost to the Club per season.

God knows how many years it would take for Paladini and Briatore to get back into the game on that basis.

Would anyone even notice they were gone?

[QPR Report]

!

On a tangential note, the latest six-months agents report should be out very shortly

(But they no longer show much spending to agents by QPR)