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.

• Football transfers: What are the agents' roles?

How much Premier League clubs paid to agents between 1 February 2022 to 31 January 2023

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 for much of this expenditure.

Arsenal and Tottenham, the rest of the so-called 'Big Six', round out the leading half-dozen agent feeders with Aston Villa next on the list. The Villans were keen to strengthen the squad for Steven Gerrard in the summer and brought in Jhon Duran along with Alex Moreno after Unai Emery replaced the former Liverpool midfielder.

At the other end of the spectrum, Nottingham Forest broke records by acquiring as many as 30 players. The promoted outfit sacked two senior members of the recruitment team that oversaw such an overhaul in October but the individual that negotiated the finances of each deal warrants plenty of praise; despite their free-wheeling approach, Forest paid agents less than any other Premier League team.

Fellow promoted side Bournemouth limited their outlay on representatives to a little over £5m while infamously canny operators Brentford round out the thriftiest three teams in the Premier League with just £5.5m to the world's agents.

On this edition of Talking Transfers, part of the 90min podcast network, Scott Saunders, Graeme Bailey & Toby Cudworth discuss Julian Nagelsmann's future and links to the vacant Tottenham head coach role, Barcelona's ambition to bring Lionel Messi 'home', Brighton teenager Evan Ferguson, Florian Wirtz, Kalvin Phillips and more!

If you can't see this embed, click here to listen to the podcast!