IT is fair to assume that Willie McKay is not on Rod Petrie's Christmas card list. The Hibernian chairman is hardly alone. In the summer disgruntled Wigan fans greeted the Scottish agent with a petition and a placard reading "McKay, you thief" as he arrived at the club's training ground.
"Wigan? They should give me the freedom of the place given the profit they made on Pascal Chimbonda, " observed McKay playfully.
Whatever you think of his modus operandi - and plenty of people are prepared to offer opinions on that - he does have a point. And he is seldom reluctant to make it.
Paul Jewell was able to reshape his side on the GBP4.5 million profit his club recouped on the defender; plucked from relative obscurity in Bastia and sold on to Tottenham a year later after handing in a transfer request within minutes of the final whistle of Wigan's concluding game of last season.
It was typical McKay, utilising his sources in France and his contacts in the British game. Some would say the timing of the request was typical McKay too. Rangers turned an even bigger profit on Jean-Alain Boumsong, who arrived at Ibrox as a free transfer and was sold to Newcastle for GBP8m six months later. Eyebrows were raised, and so were McKay's financial fortunes.
Given Boumsong's struggles at St James' Park, it is probably no surprise that the Toon Army are about as enamoured with the Glaswegian as those at Easter Road, who believe McKay has deliberately unsettled Scott Brown and Kevin Thomson in pursuit of a quick return.
"The problem is that fans only hear one side of it, " said McKay, whose journey from one-time bookmaker to major player in the world of football agency has accrued him a home in Monte Carlo and now a racehorse stable just outside Doncaster.
"Look at Hibs. According to the club, Scott and Kevin were perfectly happy until I became their agent.
Well, they weren't. They are not being paid what they are worth.
I don't think Rod Petrie was delighted when they appointed me as their agent because he couldn't walk over me. He knew the club would have to play fair - and I don't think they have been."
Perhaps part of the reason that McKay provokes such strong reactions from people is his unabashed nature. To some, he personifies the worst excesses of football agency. The game has made him rich, and he is the sort of character quite happy to let it be known that he is good at his job - hence the GBP500,000 commission he made on the Boumsong deal.
"Agents are easy targets. They always have been and always will be. It is easy for managers to blame us at the same time as conveniently forgetting how we got hold of that centre-half they needed. I know I'm not the most popular man in the game, but that is because I'm very successful and a lot of people out there are jealous, " he said matterof-factly.
If he is being portrayed as akin to the Devil Incarnate around Leith these days, he has a thick enough hide to take it. And dish some back.
"Rod Petrie is the most difficult man in the world to deal with, " McKay said. "He is what I would call pennywise and pound foolish.
"It is OK to talk about not wanting to break your wage structure, but there are times you have to be clever in looking after your top assets. I don't think there is a single player in the Hibs squad who wouldn't agree that Scott Brown is worth more to the club than he is currently being paid.
"And when you look at some of the players who have left Hibs - the likes of Derek Riordan, Gary Caldwell and Ian Murray - I reckon Rod Petrie has lost the club around GBP4m with those deals alone."
It is one view. The other is that both Brown and club captain Thomson were happy enough to sign long-term deals back in March, under the guidance of their previous agent. If, let's say, GBP1,800 a week was acceptable then, how come it is suddenly akin to slave wages now a new transfer window is looming and potential suitors are stalking the pair?
McKay's take on their situation is simple enough. He says they were badly advised, and in addition, former manager Tony Mowbray had given the pair assurances that the issue of their wages would be revisited should they continue to show strong form between March and the end of the season. Both claims have been rejected by Scott Fisher, their previous agent.
The solution, as McKay sees it, is also simple enough; up their salaries to reflect their transfer market value and write something into their contracts which allows them to move on - and Hibs to recoup a suitable sum - when they naturally outgrow the club.
He says he is ready to do that sort of deal without taking a slice of the financial pie himself; and he isn't expecting Hibs to mortgage Easter Road to fund it.
"A club like Nottingham Forest would probably pay the boys GBP8,000 a week and they're not even a Championship side. Hibs are in the SPL and they are paying the same as the fourth division down in England. Now we're not talking about that sort of money - it is more likely to be half the market rate, but Hibs aren't playing fair by valuing the boys at GBP3m and then paying them what they are.
"I'm not here to represent Hibs, my job is to represent Scott Brown and Kevin Thomson and that is what I'm doing. Now, if you ask Scott Brown's parents about me, I think they'd tell you they are very happy with the job I'm doing."
While McKay offers the familiar line about both players being 100per cent committed to the club despite the wage wrangle, the reality is that "unhappy" players soon become "unsettled" before the seemingly inevitable lucrative relocation elsewhere.
The agent himself insists he isn't in the business of moving players on for the sake of it. He points to helping convince goalkeeper Allan McGregor to stay at Rangers and fight for his first-team place and a new contract. He is, by his measure, a fixer not a spoiler.
When Alex McLeish phoned him looking for a "leader" for his Hibs team, McKay suggested Franck Sauzee and brokered the deal.
When Gordon Strachan was looking for a striker while at Southampton, it was McKay who suggested a GBP1.5m deal for Guingamp's front man. Chairman Rupert Lowe would only authorise a GBP1m transfer and the player ended up moving to Marseille.
The player in question was Didier Drogba.
While he knows there are times it suits a particular manager or chairman's purposes to criticise him, he's been around long enough to know they'll still be happy enough to call on his services when needed. It is how the wheels of this particular business are greased.
How greasy is what concerns many. When the football authorities and fraud squad in France delved into transfer dealings, McKay co-operated fully and threw open his books and his house to investigators. He says that was because he had nothing to hide.
But you cannot do the sort of highprofile deals that McKay has done without attracting some degree of suspicion.
"I got a couple of phone-calls after the Panorama 'bungs' programme from people who said they expected me to figure in it!"
he joked. "I just thought it was a 'soft' programme. We've now got Lord Stevens investigating deals in England. Well, in France it was a leading judge and their serious fraud squad. They looked at all my papers and found everything was above board."
This week he will take a holiday in Dubai with his wife. He'd promised her he would, "before the mayhem starts". He means the opening of the transfer window next month. In a way, the mayhem has already started. And it will surprise nobody that McKay has a hand in a deal or two among it.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article