The inner workings of football often seem illogical, unfair and even sometimes downright shady to fans and those looking in from the outside. Having worked inside football clubs across a variety of countries for the past 15 years, I can offer some insight as to how things work and why clubs often make what seem at face value to be baffling decisions.

Let us start with the role of agents, who seem to many to sum up what is wrong with the game. Seen as self-serving leeches in the eyes of the media, supporters and even some players, they are accused of wielding far too much power, intent only on sucking money out of the game and into their own pockets. As someone with experience dealing with agents, I can offer a slightly more balanced view.

Agents can loosely be divided into three categories. The most common are those who represent and advise footballers in negotiations and look after many parts of their daily lives and careers (in the case of the top players). Then there are middlemen or agents who base their activities on brokering transfer deals between clubs, plus those who see themselves as scouts intent on advising clubs on who to buy. Finally there are those who do a bit of everything: representation, brokering and scouting.

That players employ representatives to assist in thrashing out complex contracts is quite logical. For a club, having an agent to help sound out buyers for one of your squad who is struggling to get a game can be useful. If a deal is struck, understandably a financial reward is due. As for recruitment, I would trust my scouting staff but in a global context in which personal relations and local expertise could ensure a significantly better deal, the support of an agent is justifiable.

As with any other global business that turns over billions year on year, football is going to attract its share of charlatans. Since Fifa scrapped its licensing scheme a few years back several thousand football agents are now registered by their home FAs across all continents. From this huge figure probably only a small percentage make enough money from their football-related activities to be considered full-time agents. Many others with a modest portfolio make decent business but there are always the fly-by-nights and the "chasers" – and it is these who give the job a bad name.

I came across a fair few of these while serving as the sporting director for Monaco last summer. With French football undergoing a dramatic financial crisis, and with Monaco being one of the few clubs able to spend money, albeit with a limited budget, my phone was red hot from sunrise to midnight. There was not an hour during the day that I did not receive half a dozen phone calls from unknown numbers as agents scrabbled for a quick buck, and some upped their game – bluffing their way past reception to my office door or turning up at the team hotel on away trips, demanding a meeting.

One agent even called the club claiming we must be interested in one of his players because our head coach, Claudio Ranieri, had smiled at his client at the end of a match a few days earlier.

Undeniably, there are more sinister sides to agents than pressure sales strategies and endlessly attempting to flog players that clubs have no desire in signing. Certain agents do care more about their own interests than those of their clients, with frequent examples of players being reduced to pawns, moved from one club to another in order to accumulate profit for anyone but the athlete.

On the other hand, the players themselves – at least in western Europe – generally have the opportunity to switch to another agent if they do not feel their interests are being well served by their representatives.

Equally, football clubs by and large are careful who they do business with, though this can sometimes give the impression that certain agents have monopolised access to a given club. Sure, there are cases where the relationship between clubs and agents can seem overly cosy – and there have been unfortunate cases where agents have practically taken over the running of a club – but the sea of football is rough to navigate. To be successful one is dependent on allies and, rightly or wrongly, good relations to a powerful agent can sometimes give you the edge in landing your No1 transfer target, or even win you goodwill and much-needed influence at high political levels.

Even more crucially, some agents are too big to ignore. If you are a top club, or want to become one, enjoying a constructive dialogue with the most influential agents is absolutely paramount. According to some, the development and success of a big-spending Premier League club was held back due to the refusal of its senior management to forge relations with some of the most powerful agents in the business.

The reality is, whether one likes it or not, that to stand a chance in the race for the best players in the world – all chased by plenty of suitors ready to spend – strong, often personal, links to the most important agents are inevitable.

So while agents are seen as fair game to blame for the failings of football, from the perspective of a manager, chief executive or director, you have to take a pragmatic stance. Embarking on an anti-agent crusade simply will not help the football club.

Tor-Kristian Karlsen is a Norwegian football scout and executive, formerly the chief executive and sporting director at Monaco. He has previously worked as a scout for Grasshopper, Watford, Bayer Leverkusen, Hannover and Zenit St Petersburg and as sporting director for Fredrikstad FK