Chelsea and Arsenal will keep agents' fees secret

Chelsea and Arsenal have no plans to follow Manchester United's example by revealing details of the money they pay to agents.

United took the unprecedented step yesterday of admitting they agreed to pay £8.5million in agents' fees, including £1.8m to super agent Pini Zahavi, in the financial year ending 31 July 2004.

Chief executive David Gill called on other clubs to show similar transparency in a bid to clean up the game but is unlikely to get any support from their main Premiership rivals.

Arsenal, who are listed on the less stringent OFEX market and Chelsea, who are private, face less pressure to share information with shareholders and have no plans to change.

Arsenal announced pre-tax profits of £10.6m in their annual results earlier this month and Chelsea will file results for 2003-04 by the end of this year. In the last financial year Chelsea spent over £150m on new players and agents were among the chief beneficiaries of the Roman Abramovich revolution.

Zahavi was involved in the the vast majority of those deals, before being phased out by Abramovich this summer, but details of his remuneration will not be made public. A senior Chelsea source said: "United have done this because they were forced into it by their Irish shareholders. They wouldn't have done so voluntarily but now have to make a virtue of it. We're in a completely different situation.

"Agents' fees are confidential business information and there's a lot of that we don't release."