By Hugh Southon

It’s one of the seriously unfortunate downsides of football that agents – who see players as nothing other that financial commodities – believe they can rule the roost in most contract negotiations.

Once it affected only top line players but the situation currently surrounding Conor Coventry demonstrates how far out of hand the  situation has become.

West Ham have a strict pay structure in place at academy and Development team level which was clearly demonstrated in the Declan Rice affair.

At the time a new deal was negotiated – and of course he was a first team regular – he was on the top whack of £2.,500 which is as high as it goes at that level.

He deserved every penny he got in his new deal which is set for review at the end of the season when no doubt various other clauses will be triggered which should be more than enough – in financial terms anyway – to keep him happy with life at the London Stadium.

But Conor Coventry, who has made one brief appearance in the first team against Macclesfield last season, is now in a situation where his representatives, the Base Soccer Agency, appear to believe he is worth double what any other player at Under 23 level is earning.

Tell that to Ben Johnson, Joe Powell, Nathan Holland, Dan Kemp, Xande Silva or Anthony Scully and imagine the response you might get.

Imagine, even further, the issues it would cause were he to be awarded it – there would be uproar and quite rightly so.

The 19 year old has been at the club since age 10 and has been brought to his current position via the club’s development  policy which will have cost a fair bit of dough – nothing comes cheaply – but that’s not a consideration his agents are likely to even consider.

It will be a crying shame should he be forced to move on because of the greed of his agents but if that’s what has to happen so be it.

A club’s entire pay policy cannot be wrecked by giving a player who has potential but not much more precisely what he wants when he wants.

The only way to stand up to agents is to face them down at every level because one thing’s for sure Fifa and Uefa, for all the words and promises of action to tame agents, have done absolutely nothing and are very unlikely to do so.

I reckon Base are chancing their arm and playing with the young midfielder’s future – for the young man’s sake let’s hope they wind their necks in and to the right thing.