Agents stance hasn't cost West Brom players - Richard Garlick

Albion's low spend on agents has not caused them to lose out on players, Richard Garlick has claimed.

Figures released this week revealed the Baggies paid players' representatives £3.3million over the past year, the fourth-lowest of clubs in the top flight.

Garlick, the Baggies director of football administration, believes that is down to their long-standing reputation of not paying big agents' fees and also the club's structure, which means they do not employ outside representatives to speak to other clubs.

And he insists refusing to pay an agent's fee has never been a factor in them missing out on a deal.

"I've not known us lose a deal specifically on the agent side of it," he said.

"We've not done deals because the overall financial package wasn't right and you could factor an agent's fee into that as well but I can't think of a deal where we've lost out.

"I suspect agents might not have put some players to us because they think we're not going to pay that well, particularly foreign players.

"That's not a great position to get started on, if the whole deal is dependent on an agent's fee.

"Agents will often say if I don't get paid that, I know I can get it from there.

"That's where you have to say, 'well that's fine you'll have to go and get it from there' despite the consequences for the club."

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Garlick revealed Albion work from a base level of paying agents five per cent of a player's wages, though they are prepared to be flexible.

He explained: "You have to flex that as well because if you sat there and said - like Blackpool once did, 'we're not going to pay any agent fees', you wipe out probably 80 per cent of the players that would even consider coming to you because their agents are not going to work for nothing.

"We look at them (agents) as a cost of sale from a pure business point of view.

"You've got a pie - there's so much for the player, so much for the club, so much for the agent and the pie only gets cut certain ways.

"If you want more you have to get more out of something else."

In total, Premier League clubs spent just under £130million on agents between October 1, 2014, to September 30 this year. Albion's spend accounted for just 2.6 per cent of that.

Garlick added: "We will always deal club to club and always try to avoid an agent purporting to act on our behalf in a deal.

"We'll deal with the player's agent, that's a given.

"But if an agent presented a deal to us, we'd look at it, but ideally we'd say 'listen, we'll sort out the club, the transfer, the loan fee, whatever it may be, don't expect to get paid on that.

"If you want to get paid either get paid by them (the player) or buddy up with a player's agent and get paid that way.

"Some clubs don't operate that way and it's how your business is set up.

"With the model we've got we try and make sure we keep things as transparent as possible.

"You know what you've got to pay the player's agent, the club and the player and keep it as simple as that.

"A lot of other clubs work different and have preferred agents they will use to get them the best deals in the market.

"Over the years it's worked well for us in terms of keeping the monies down."