Liam Keen has shared the amount of money Wolves gave to Jorge Mendes and his Gestifute agency, after FA shared the club’s official agent fees last week.
Agents are prominent figures in football, and serve in the interests of players when they want to transfer clubs or get new contracts.
Their work does not come cheap, as evidenced by the whopping £460 million spent between February 2025 and February 2026.
Wolves’ own agent fees were uncomfortably high.
Only six other clubs shelled out more money to agents than Wolves in that timeframe – and Wolves current predicament obviously makes their £25,960,372 spent look much worse.
Of course, fans know that agent Jorge Mendes has been heavily associated with Wolves for many years, and now it’s been shared how much of that figure went to him.
Jorge Mendes has earned a fortune from Wolves in recent times
Mendes was once a highly admired figure at Molineux.
He brokered lots of deals in Fosun’s early days at the club to help Wanderers become extremely competitive in the Premier League.
He had many hits. But he’s also had a lot of misses, too.
After a bit of break from leaning on Mendes, Wolves got back into bed with the agent in 2025
And the club have paid him an absolute fortune.
Liam Keen said on the E&S podcast: “One thing I do need to say, particularly for this £26 million figure, is that there’s a little bit of context worth including which I’ve seen spoken to sources about.
“Of that roughly just under £26 million, £12.5 million was payments that were deferred from previous seasons. So about roughly half of this £26 million is not related to transfer activity in this period of the last 12 months.
“The reason for that is – and it is money that was due to Gestifute by the way, I’ve had that confirmed – it was Gestifute essentially saying they don’t need the money now and they were happy for it to be paid later when it was a better time.
“the better time to repay it, Wolves decided, was now, in this year period. That’s a little bit of context. However, it doesn’t change the fact that Wolves still spent that money over a period of a few years, we don’t know exactly how far back it’s been deferred.
“But they still spent that money on agent fees to Gestifute. If you were to take the next, let’s say the last five years and add up their agent fees, the figure is still the same, they just had part of it deferred to this year.
“They still spent the same amount over a certain amount of time on agent fees. But part of it wasn’t actually based on, or at least half of it was not based on transfer activity from the last year, which I think is a slightly important distinction to make, just to give a bit of context. But it still doesn’t change the fact that they’ve still spent this money on agent fees and a lot has gone to Gestifute.”
Fee lays bare how much faith Wolves put in Mendes
For Wolves to have paid £12.5 million to Gestifute and this be the current predicament really is a terrible look.
Yes, he has brokered some good deals for the club.
But now Wolves are on the brink of relegation, and he has played a huge part in the club’s recruitment.
But it’s on Wolves, and those that placed so much trust in him. And in particular, Jeff Shi, who signed off on all the big decisions as executive chairman.
Ultimately Mendes is self-serving, and a further suggestion of that was when it was claimed he tried to get Jorgen Strand Larsen to Newcastle United last summer despite Wolves’ firm stance that he wasn’t going to be sold.
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