READING FC are the third highest spenders on agents’ fees in the Championship over the past year.

Latest figures released by the Football Association show Royals splashed out a whopping £2,850,283 on fees for the period covering February 1 2017 to January 31 2018.

Only Aston Villa (£5,510,180) and Sunderland (£4,370, 897) forked out more over the 12 month period which includes last summer’s transfer window as well as this January’s.

A large chunk of the cash was connected to the club record transfers of Tiago Ilori from Liverpool and Sone Aluko from Fulham plus the signings of Mo Barrow from Swansea, Leandro Bacuna from Aston Villa, Jon Dadi Bodvarsson from Wolves and Vito Mannone from Sunderland.

The figure also includes new contracts handed out to a host of players such as Yann Kermorgant, Jordan Obita, Liam Kelly, Chris Gunter, John Swift, Paul McShane and Liam Moore.

The amount of fees paid by Reading is likely to raise a few eyebrows among supporters.

Royals have struggled through most of the Championship campaign, are 19th in the table and replaced their manager recently when Paul Clement took over from Jaap Stam.

Net total of fees paid to agents by Championship clubs between Feb 2017 and Jan 2018 (alphabetically): Aston Villa £5,510,180; Barnsley £419,638; Birmingham City £2,461,909; Bolton Wanderers £223,432; Brentford £1,690,415; Bristol City £843,174; Burton Albion £268,490; Cardiff City £2,026,917; Derby County £2,180,305; Fulham £2,428,175; Hull City £1,882,530; Ipswich Town £241,969; Leeds United £1,349,452; Middlesbrough £2,538,840; Millwall £311,505; Norwich City £2,212,410; Nottingham Forest £1,141,512; Preston North End £1,046,679; QPR £1,817,113; READING £2,850,283; Sheffield United £652,070; Sheffield Wednesday £1,714,130; Sunderland £4,370,897; Wolverhampton Wanderers £2,001,023. Total: £42,183,048.