Since last year, Premier League clubs have been required to publish the payments they’ve made to agents during the preceding 12 months at the end of November and the OS revealed that players’ representatives have received £2.28m from Aston Villa between October ’09 and September ’10, up from the £1.71m last year.

Given the lack of transfer activity at Villa Park in the last year, that might cause a head or two to be scratched.  I suspect it reflects how some of these deals are structured (e.g. the Dunne and Collins deals could easily have rolled over) and includes signing on bonuses and fees when renewing contracts of existing players.

Marc Albrighton signs a new contract in September ’09 and then another one this year and we’re all happy, but guess what… *ker-ching*.

But in the grand scheme of things, it’s small potatoes and when we look at spending across the whole league we find one more table that we occupy the bottom half of. Overall spending is down from £70.69m to £67.14m, Man City cutting their outlay by more than half from £12.87m to £5.95m, but Chelsea remain in the same ball park and top out the latest table.

Surprisingly, over the course of the two years we have data for, Liverpool were among the biggest spenders with £15.69m over 24 months. Compare that with Villa’s outlay of less than £4m over the same period and it’s clear that things could be a good deal worse.

Just for a little perspective, I’ve graphed the published figures for the last two years; last year first and you can click on the graphics to embiggen. And I’m not calling anyone liars here, but Man Utd; a little less than us last year, a little more this year? Really?

[Sources: 2009, 2010]

Also, interesting how much Tottenham have spent on agents given all the fuss that was made about their wage bill being so much lower than ours, no?