Where United stand after Premier League’s £460million agent fees bombshell
Earlier this week, the FA revealed how much Premier League clubs have spent on agent fees over the last year.
Sesko arrived in August.(Image: 2025 Manchester United FC)
“Agents have a bad reputation because nobody really understands what an agent does,” the founder of an international football agency once said during an interview with the BBC.
“We get paid for what we’re worth. If we do a good job for our player, then we get paid. If we do a bad job, we don’t. There are plenty of agents who don’t earn a living. You’ve got to be good at what you do.”
The agents who have recently dealt with Manchester United must be ‘good at what they do’ because the club spent £31,777,462 on agent fees between February 2025 and February 2026.
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Some have predicted football would eat itself with the rocketing additional costs attached to transfers, but the money involved at the very top of the game continues to rise to extraordinary levels.
There is no sign of elite football slowing down financially. Although some clubs in lower leagues across Europe are struggling, the world’s biggest clubs are still splurging to give themselves the best chance of success.
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Agents are in the middle of a thriving economy. They look after a player’s interest, advise them on their next move, negotiate and arrange the contract and pocket a decent fee for doing so.
The FA recently published the figures showing how much Premier League clubs have spent on agent fees over the last year, with the combined spend sitting at a record £460m.
Chelsea spent the most on agent fees for the third year in a row, splashing £61.1m. Aston Villa spent the second most in the top-flight (£38.4m), Manchester City were third in the table (£37.3m), while Liverpool (£33.8m) and Arsenal (£32.1m) came next in fourth and fifth place respectively. United were ranked sixth with their £31.7m spend.
Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital have made a mess at Stamford Bridge since they bought the club from Roman Abramovich. Chelsea have spent a fortune on transfer fees, splashing more than £1billion on players since 2022, and those deals have come attached with huge agent fees.
Chelsea recently announced the biggest pre-tax loss in Premier League history, to make matters worse, and their ownership has seen an abysmal return on the pitch for the level of their investment.
The London club have become a case study on how not to run a football club. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has been the antithesis of Chelsea’s ownership since he gained control of football operations at Old Trafford, cutting costs in every department possible to put the club on a firmer financial footing.
Ratcliffe has got a lot wrong as a United co-owner, so it’s difficult to know where to start with his mistakes, but at least United have not wasted as much money as Chelsea over the last few years.
Chelsea have the shame of being top of the agent spend list. Of course, agent fees are necessary to sign the best players, but they have spent an unsustainable amount on representative fees.
United’s regime will be pleased with their rank of sixth in the agent fee table. The club has a bad reputation in the transfer market, mostly because Ed Woodward’s era was such a disaster under the Glazers, but it’s gradually improving.
In the last 10 years, United have spent the most on agent fees in the Premier League just once, but that was between 2015 and 2016 when David de Gea signed a lucrative new contract after almost moving to Real Madrid.
Since then, United have consistently been among the highest spenders on agent fees in the Premier League without being the outright most, which is how Ineos will continue to operate in the coming years.