Football clubs in the Premiership should reveal how much money they spend on paying agents involved in arranging transfers, the Liberal Democrats have claimed.
The party believes that teams playing at the highest level in England should follow the example of Football League clubs, who all agreed earlier this year to publish agent fee information.
Don Foster, sports spokesman for the Lib Dems, explained that three separate calculations by his department reveal that Premiership clubs could be paying agents anything between £27 million and £150 million every year.
The most conservative estimate is based upon the financial records of Manchester United's, being the only club to publicly announce how much they give football agents in each individual transfer, while the second uses approximations from HM Revenue and Customs relating to VAT owed by clubs from domestic transfer deals.
But the third estimate from the Liberal Democrats, that £150 million is being taken away from football by agents, is perhaps the most realistic as it simply modifies the sum paid by Football League clubs proportionately to the value of transfer fees in the Premiership, which collectively stood at £300 million in the 2005-06 season.
"Agents' fees are a black hole in football's finances, one which desperately needs to have some light shone upon it. Fans deserve to know where their hard-earned money is going," said Mr Foster.
"Yet this research shows that the top clubs' secrecy means that nobody knows what the true cost of agents is. The Premiership needs to follow the example of the Football League and show fans their agent bill."
The chairman of Reading, John Madejski, recently announced that he was planning to sell his stake in the club, despite having seen a decade of hard work pay off when the club won promotion to the Premiership last season, after being shocked at the levels of financial greed among his fellow chairmen and agents.
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