Which clubs are mentioned the most on social media and why the stories are mostly untrue

I have two big beefs about the way the media write about football: one is the stories they select and the other is the way they present those stories.

Now, one of the defences that the media has in relation to these points is that their choice of stories relates to the number of followers the clubs have on social media.  The more followers a club has on social media, the more the mainstream media will feature them.

There is ,of course, a logic in this in that if lots of people are following a club on social media and then the newspapers, etc., know they will attract more readers if they feature that club, and then more readers bring in more advertising revenue.

But there is a problem here, because the number of articles about a club has nothing to do with the amount of news there is about a club, and media articles have to be about something.   And when it comes down to it, clubs can only have 25 registered over-age professional players from which to choose the team for each match.

So that means the amount of news is modest, and yet the news stories have to keep on keeping on.   Recent research shows that Real Madrid has 488 million followers on the likes of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X.   Barcelona have 442 million followers, and Manchester United have 239 million, followed by Paris Saint-Germain on 208 million.

Now these fans have all signed up for news and want something – generally something “newsworthy” – each time they log in.   What they don’t want are statements of love and adoration – they want to be told something new.  

And that not only applies to the four clubs listed above.  Following them in the worldwide top ten of followed football clubs are Manchester City (5th), Liverpool (6th), Chelsea 9th and then Arsenal in 10th.

And the question that then occurred to our little group who were looking at this information, was, “What on earth is there to write about each day to satisfy all these people and keep them reading?”   I mean we like to publish two or three stories a day, and we can do that because we sometimes delve into the murkier parts of football as a whole.   But three or four purely Arsenal stories a day …. that would involve a fair amount of making stuff up.

But having something to write about each day was quite an important point, because although people don’t unsubscribe from their social media platforms very much, they do lose interest if there is not more information hitting them day by day.

In fact, the media has latched onto this and seeing which clubs have the most followers tends to direct their fantasy stories about who a club is signing or selling day by day based on these numbers.  So these stories have nothing to do with reality, but are to do with the number of followers each club has on these groups.  ManC have a lot more followers than Arsenal, so they get more stories about who they are going to buy.

Of course, they aren’t really going to buy these players – as our research over many years published on this site has shown, only three out of every hundred players tipped to be coming to Arsenal actually do turn up at the club – and the numbers are similar for other clubs.

But still, it is the number of followers each club has that determines how many stories there are about them buying a new player – it has nothing to do with the reality of how many players the club is actually pursuing.

And there is another problem here, because although tales about who the club might buy make up a lot of the media’s coverage, there have to be other stories too,k and of course these too are made up.

They can be tales of arguments between players, injuries in training, players expressing a desire to leave, the board’s dissatisfaction with the manager….

Now the fact is that, of course, most clubs don’t have that many bust-ups, players wanting out, boardroom arguments etc etc, but the media know they have millions of readers demanding stories every day.  And if there are no stories on one site the readers go to another site.   And what happens is that bloggers and journalists then make them up.

Indeed, it can be quite shocking to see a story about a player wanting to leave club X because his wife is unhappy in the town and wants to move.  But it can be even more shocking to the player who knows it is utterly untrue.  He rushes to the assistant manager and says it is not true, and the assistant shrugs and says, “We know.”

But the problem is that readers of the media still think some of the stories are true, and this leads to supporters’ feelings that a) the club is terrible at completing transfers and b) the players have no loyalty to their club.   Fans can turn on a player and start booing him each time he touches the ball.   And the player says, well if that’s how they feel, I will leave,” and a perfectly good player is lost.

The media sees its power grow, and clubs now have staff working with agents on stopping players from believing the media.  This, in turn leads to the media having more and more fantasists making up stories about particular clubs.