Transfer news: the 55 players Arsenal now trying to buy

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Compiled by Tony Attwood

While it is normal each summer for blogs and newspaper websites to “report” or “discover” (or I would suspect “invent”) transfer tales involving Arsenal FC, this season, the pattern of events seems slightly different with most reporters focusing on a much smaller number of players, although with a greater certainty – until suddenly the word spreads that Arsenal are “walking away” from the deal.

Of course one part of the pattern remains much the same: 95% of the reports cite another website as the source of the story – and if one goes into that source, it is more often than not the case that this source merely quotes another source, and so on round and round.

Obviously, the two clubs involved – the buyer and the seller – are not going to be reporting the tale, since if the story is true, they simply want to get on with the transfer without interruptions from without.   If the story is false, then neither has any benefit from talking up the story and getting supporters overexcited.

No, the only people who really get a benefit out of transfer stories are those who publish them, because the tales have two great benefits to newspapers and websites.  The stories cost nothing, and they bring in readership.   And indeed we might add one more point as well: in the aftermath of the transfer window, the commentators can then blame Arsenal for being too slow, too mean, lacking in ambition, employing poor negotiators etc etc.  It is, in short, always the same tale.   The transfer story was real, but Arsenal simply couldn’t pull it off.   If only the writer had been on the spot (it is implied) the deal would have been done in good time and Arsenal would now be top of the league.

Indeed even the fact that 97 to 98% of the stories concern transfers that never happen, doesn’t put the rumour mongers off.  So let’s see what we’ve got now…. for if this window goes along the lines of the last five years, we’ve still got 50 or more players that Arsenal are going to try and sign!

Incoming

And the players reported to be leaving…. (some may have changed their minds!)