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fortnight ago, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson made some colorful, and critical, comments about the role of football agents. Days later, his club captain Gary Neville accused agents of "mollycoddling" players.

Cynics laughed off Neville's contribution as the latest effort by "teacher's pet" to please his boss.

Fergie's assertion was a comment on the changing nature of the game.

This week it became clear the United pair had timed their comments to perfection.

The Premier League published figures from October 1 last year to September 30 this year showing clubs had paid out a massive *70 million steling to agents.

Manchester City (who spent around 170 million on players at the prompting of owner Sheikh Mansour) led with almost 13 million, while Chelsea paid out 9.6 million.

And Liverpool paid out (6.7 million), Tottenham (6.1 million), Wigan (5.5 million) and Arsenal (4.8 million) to keep agents happy.

The Premier League asked its member clubs to publish their figures on their websites, but few were backed by detailed explanations. Only Manchester City went into specifics - listing 35 player transactions and showing its 12.9 million outlay included installments on deals done in the last financial year.

This policy of publishing payments was aimed at greater transparency in club's financial dealings, following widespread concern over financial excesses in the game.

Yet the Premier League is still not required to give details on what agents do to earn their money.

Clubs are not required to break down their payments on a deal-by-deal basis, nor to declare which agents were paid for which deals.

Indeed, the only transfer deal explained in any detail was that which took left-back Wayne Bridge from Chelsea to Manchester City. Bizarrely, given that it appeared a straightforward case of a club happily selling a player to a club which wanted him, Chelsea made a *900,000 payment to agent Pini Zahavi.

So, what services would the agent provide the player, or the club, in that deal? And what do they provide that could not otherwise be handled by a solicitor or accountant?

Let's revisit those comments from Sir Alex Ferguson and Gary Neville and try to read between the lines. Admittedly, Sir Alex's biggest gripe was about players' not taking pride in their performance ("They're less ready to hold their hands up"), but he also lamented the growing role of agents in initiating player moves.

He said: "I don't get phone calls from agents as such, but nonetheless they're conducting most transfers now. It's hard to handle that.

"I had an agent phone me up - we had a young boy, *who* got in the England Under-21s, and his agent phoned the next day and said, *I think it's time we sat down and talked about a new contract for the boy'. He'd played for England once. But to his mind that demanded a new contract. I said, *Well, let's see how he plays for Manchester United'."

Traditionally, an agent's essential brief was to find his client a prime contract and then maximize his earning potential within it. Gary Neville feels today's players have allowed agents to go far beyond that.

He said: "There are some agents who do a good job looking after players, but there are others who stifle and mollycoddle players. Every footballer needs an adviser at some point. But a player doesn't need to pay between five and 15 percent of his wages to a guy to set up a bank account, buy him a new fridge, or ask his club's chief executive for a pay rise."

The comments of Manchester United's manager and captain are worth highlighting since the club used to publish all payments it made to agents, deal by deal.

In 2004, for instance, we learned that Ruud van Nistelrooy's agent received a staggering 1.34 million for renegotiating the striker's contract.

Now, under the ownership of the Glazer family, United has stopped publishing such details. Hence our need to live off the scraps of information tossed us by the likes of Fergie and Neville.

The latter may have made the more colorful point, but it was his manager's comments that gave us the greatest insight: it is now obvious that agents are not just acting as advisers to players - they are also being employed by clubs directly, to help sign a player, or assist in selling one. But just how much of that 70 million was spent on this?

Agents generally take around five percent of a player's signing-on fee or his wages for the term of the contract, but what of the fees some agents allegedly earn for "persuading" a club or chairman to "consider" negotiating a transfer?

The most vociferous critics of agents and their earnings argue this money is "going out of the game".