PART of the job of being an agent is being a punchbag. You get the blame for the bad stuff and, in exchange, you get your percentage. You are the scapegoat and you can’t complain. Not that you necessarily care.

As of yesterday morning, Romelu Lukaku looked set to join Manchester United, with the Everton striker to undergo a medical after the clubs agreed an initial £75 million fee.

United and Chelsea put in competing bids for Lukaku, but while the offers may have been close, there was an obvious distinction being made in West London: Chelsea’s offer was “net of agent fees and commissions”. And – going hand in hand with that nugget of information – was the suggestion that Lukaku favoured a return to Stamford Bridge, but his agent, Mino Raiola, was pushing him towards United.

Perhaps that is because Raiola already has a foot in the door there, having already taken Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Paul Pogba and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to the club in the past 13 months, and wishes to extend further his power base over the club and Ed Woodward.

We’ve been here before with Raiola. The “Football Leaks” documents appeared to reveal he earned more than £40m from Pogba’s move to United from Juventus. At the very least, you’d have to brand him resourceful for figuring out how to get paid by every party involved in the transfer: he earned commissions from Juventus, from United and from Pogba himself.

Last month, Raiola was pilloried when Gigio Donnarumma, Milan’s hugely gifted 18-year-old goalkeeper, turned down a deal that would have paid him some £170,000 a week. Donnarumma had pledged his loyalty to the club and to the fans, but, entering the final year of his contract appeared to have a Raiola-induced change of heart. Not only would he not extend his deal, he’d leave as a free agent in a year’s time.

After three weeks of being described in Beelzebubian terms, Raiola apparently came back to the negotiating table and worked out an even better deal for his young client. Just over £200,000 per week, plus a £25,000-a-week contract for his brother (also a goalkeeper and a few years older), plus a reasonable release clause if things don’t work out. As of last night, the deal was in the “agreed-but-not-signed” category, leaving some to wonder what else Raiola had up his sleeve.

This is the same Raiola who, essentially, negotiated a cut of Mkhitaryan’s sell-on from Borussia Dortmund even if he wasn’t actually sold on.

Raiola has been crucified for these things and more. Logic suggests it won’t affect him one bit to be hammered over which way he’s steering Lukaku. Because the fact of the matter is that, as Raiola himself points out time and again, he has no written representation contract with his players. They are free to leave him whenever they want, if they think there’s a better option elsewhere.

And yet they stick around. Which rather suggests they don’t feel exploited.

ON a more practical level, Lukaku’s decision on where to sign will likely set into motion a whole chain of events, for the simple reason that, at the top, there are only so many saleable assets and so many potential destinations.

Antonio Conte at Chelsea and Jose Mourinho at United have both voiced annoyance at the relative lack of transfer activity, reiterating the importance of getting players in early. You would expect, therefore, that the team that loses out on Lukaku will make a strong move for one of the two other obvious alternatives, Real Madrid’s Alvaro Morata and Torino’s Andrea Belotti. The thing is though, Madrid have no particular need to sell, unless they move for Monaco starlet Kylian Mbappe this summer, which – apparently – they won’t. Therefore, unless Morata himself pushes for a transfer elsewhere, Madrid can handle a sale on their terms. Which is bound to be very, very pricey.

Torino’s terms for Belotti are rather stiff too. They insist they are holding out for the full value of his release clause, which is around £85m. That’s a hefty price considering Belotti has scored 44 goals in a 108-match Serie A career and four years ago was playing fourth-tier football.

Still, the Lukaku deal could end up having the opposite effect. It could actually depress the market for both players for the simple reason that there are few clubs who can afford a £70m-plus centre-forward and so suddenly it would become a buyer’s market.

Speaking of prolific centre-forwards, Arsenal got theirs, breaking their club record to do so. Lyon’s Alexandre Lacazette cost them some £46.5m plus another £6.1m in bonuses.

You can expect the “Kroenke-is-cheap-Wenger-hates-spending-money” brigade to be kept at bay for a short while longer. Lacazette has averaged more than 30 goals in each of the last three seasons and, at 26, is entering the prime of his career.

He’s strong and athletic and very much a central striker who converts chances – exactly what Arsenal were lacking given their incumbent attacking corps.

Alexis Sanchez is not a centre-forward (and could be on his way). Olivier Giroud is a centre-forward but doesn’t score much. And Danny Welbeck has serious injury and durability issues.

The cloud over Lacazette is that he’s been on sale for the past two summers and nobody bit until now.

For all his goalscoring exploits, France boss Didier Deschamps still prefers Giroud as his centre-forward option as evidenced by the fact that Lacazette has just 11 caps and a single goal for Les Bleus.

Presumably, Wenger will now have to shift Giroud – he already hasn’t been starting much and there’s a World Cup coming up so he will want playing time – while also figuring out the future of Mesut Ozil and, especially, Alexis Sanchez.

Don’t expect a resolution any time soon.