Aston Villa, Wolves, West Brom and Walsall's agents fees revealed

Their £21.2million outlay was larger than both Newcastle and Tottenham, though some way behind Chelsea who topped the table with a huge £75m spend.

In total, top flight clubs spent nearly £410m on agents' fees, an increase of more than £90m on the previous year.

Wolves had the division's 11th largest spend with £13.3m, though it was more than double their figure of £6.1m for the 2022-23 campaign.

The figures take into account the 12-month period between February 1, 2023 and this year and are of particular interest for Villa, who must comply with Uefa’s Financial Fair Play cost controls following last season’s qualification for the Europa Conference League.

Clubs competing in Europe are restricted to spending 90 per cent of their revenue on wages, transfers and agent fees.

Villa broke their club transfer record last summer with the £43m signing of Moussa Diaby from Bayer Leverkusen, while Pau Torres arrived from Villarreal for £31m.

Midfielder Youri Tielemans also arrived on a free transfer, while Clement Lenglet and Nicolo Zaniolo joined on loan from Barcelona and Galatasaray respectively. Villa’s total spend on agents’ fees marked an increase of more than £5.5m on the previous year.

Agents can also be paid for contract negotiations and the sale of players and that is the chief reason for the increase at Wolves, who saw 17 players depart last summer for combined fees of more than £140m.

That included the sale of Ruben Neves to Al-Hilal for £47m, while Matheus Nunes moved to Manchester City on deadline day in a deal worth £53m.

In the Championship, Albion saw their spend on agents’ fees fall slightly from £2.3m to £2.1m with Leeds, relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season, registering the second tier’s largest amount with £13.2m.

Shrewsbury Town had the fourth lowest spend on agents’ fees in League Two with just £79,173, a decrease of around £4,000 on the previous year. Only Cambridge, Carlisle and Cheltenham had a lower spend.

Walsall saw their spend decrease by nearly £17,000 to £51,784 while Wrexham, promoted back to the EFL, saw theirs more than double from £163,737 to £347,027, making them the biggest spenders in League Two.