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The report viewable at http://www.football-league.co.uk/staticFiles/a5/3c/0,,10794~146597,00.pdf showed that the 72 League clubs paid a total of £8.8m between July 2008 and June 2009, compared to £11.1m for the same period in 2007/08. This shows a reduction of £2.3 million from the season before.
The report shows a breakdown of each club and division. In summary Championship sides paid a total of £7.5m, all 24 clubs spent on agents.
League One clubs spent £1.1m with six clubs not paying a penny to agents - these being Crewe, Hartlepool, Hereford, Northampton, Scunthorpe and Tranmere Rovers. Three of these of course were relegated but Scunthorpe were promoted via the play-offs and Tranmere lost out on a play-off place to Scunthorpe in the final minutes of the season. This shows that success on-the-pitch can be gained by not paying agent fees in League One
Of the 18 League One club who did pay licenced agents money, Walsall contributed £29,340 to this figure. Over the course of the season Walsall made 12 player recruitments, 4 contract renewals, 4 releases from contract and 2 loans, therefore had a total of 22 agent qualifying transactions.
It comes as no surprise to see Leeds top the League One table of agent fee spending with £376,000 which represents nearly one-third of the League One total spend. Next up was Leicester City with £121,700 and then Brighton with £99,200. Six sides spent less than Walsall on agent fees so this puts Walsall just in the top-half of Agent Spenders.
It was League Two where clubs cut back, spending just £0.2m, with 13 clubs refraining from spending in this manner.