'The agent earned his money' - Liverpool's cut price deal for Alexis Mac Allister explained

I’m sure life was so much easier in the days when the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson or Brian Clough would conduct contract negotiations and basically tell the player what they were getting, take it or leave it?

In many people’s eyes agents are the scourge of the beautiful game but I’m sure many of the games top players would disagree with that when it comes to the work of their respective representatives.

In the ongoing saga of Alexis Mac Allister’s transfer away from the Amex it appears that the Albion may yet end up short due to terms in the Argentinian World Cup Winners current contract.

It’s being widely reported now that despite many people thinking in the current market Alexis is worth between £60/70 million, he left the Amex for far less after Liverpool triggered a contract clause with a reported initial payment of £35m – with add-ons that could take it to £55m.

Unfortunately, the Albion are effectively victims of theirs and Mac Allister’s success, when both parties put pen to paper on this deal £50million was possibly on the high side when estimating a transfer value along with the facts that Alexis was yet to be a part of Argentina’s World Cup win late last year and the Albion were a long way off qualifying for Europe.

If Marc Cucurella’s £63 million switch to Chelsea last August is the benchmark, then Albion clearly will have been short-changed when selling one of their prized assets.

That will be highlighted even more so if Moises Caicedo makes his proposed switch to either Arsenal or Chelsea for around £75million.

If Cucrella is worth £62, and Caicedo fetches around £75 million without the trigger clause, how much is Alexis actually worth?

But that’s immaterial, a contract is a contract and however maligned agents are Mac Allister’s representative has certainly earnt his money on this occasion, as well as almost certainly part of the money Liverpool will have ‘saved’ going to him and his client.

It was a somewhat different story some 42 years ago, when the only other world class player, alongside Mac Allister, to date to play for the Albion, Mark Lawrenson left the Goldstone ironically for Liverpool for £900,000.

And what was that then record Albion fee worth in today’s UK inflation calculator? £3.2million!

Agent involvement or not looking at those stats its hard to argue that football isn’t in danger of spiralling out of control when it comes to transfers?