- Football civil war is just what we wanted and have needed for so long
- Let’s change the rules of football as we go along; it’s more fun that way.
- Transfers: 6 July. Arsenal signing 33 players!
By Tony Attwood
Take a look at the transfer rumour stories that emerge from the internet moment by moment, and what you see is an array of players that Arsenal are reportedly thinking of buying, with that occasionally interrupted by news of players that Arsenal can’t have because they have not acted fast enough or not offered enough or not sold enough players to make room for the newcomers within the 25 man limit.
Now we know from past summers that the number of players that Arsenal do actually buy is usually about 3% of those that are talked up by the media, so in many ways it is easy to dismiss this as nonsense, and of no consequence. But this raises the vaild question: why do the media keep doing this, each and every transfer window?
Of course one very solid reason is that the media haven’t got a clue who is going where, but is committed to carrying articles all the time, in order to give the impression that this particular outlet is on the ball, offering you all the latest news about player movements and the like. So they publish new buying stories each day.
Another is that they have a committment with their advertisers to reach a set number people, and in order to do that they have to publish something even if it is twaddle.
However, the constant outpouring from these websites and newspapers has an effect on the readership, for it can make it look as if Arsenal seriously are moving around Europe desperately trying to find someone (sometimes it looks like anyone) they can sign. For not only are there stories running day and night each covering a story that Arsenal are desperate to buy, but also suggests that either Arsenal are in the market to sell half their squad (after all how else are they going to be able to afford to buy the 100 or more players that they are tipped to be buying each and every summer window?) or that the whole thing is a load of twaddle.
Now this constant barrage of Arsenal buying can unfortunately have a really serious impact on Arsenal, because the one or two players that the club does seek to buy each summer find their prices going up and up -and indeed at the moment we can see really quite average players being quoted with prices of over £100m!!!
This is also very dispiriting for players already in the Arsenal squad, because it looks all the time as if Arsenal are ceaselessly trying to get rid of their current first team (that is the squad that won the league) and replace it with all these £100m players they are looking to buy. Agents, who make their money primarily out of a percentage cut of each transfer, then say to the player, “look Arseenal are trying to get rid of you, here’s a club that really wants you,” and so the player is encouraged to move on.
Now each summer we try and do our bit by pointing out that the vast majority of these transfers are fantasies that simply not only don’t happen, but actually were never going to happen – they are just childish stories invented by journalists anxious to keep you reading their paper even if most of the content is gibberish.
But there is a secondary effect which we are now seeing come into play more and more, and that is the clogging up of the entire transfer process, as it becomes harder and harder to work out what transfer rumours have any basis in reality, and which ones have just been made up to try and keep the readers thinking that this or that newspaper is in the know.
In short the whole transfer rumour process is, year by year, becoming more and more unstable, as it is mor and more about newspapers and blogs keeping their readership by reporting fanciful tales the overwhelming majority of which will never ever see the light of day.
Worse, an awful lot of what appears is total nonsense. For example, Arsenal, like many PL clubs last season, did not fill all 25 of the positions for over 21 year old players. But we have seen a number of newspapers and bloggers saying that Arsenal have to sell before they can buy in order to offload players from their unwieldly squad to make spaces available.
Now we have, year by year tried to publicise the pervidious nature of these rumours by summarising them on this blog and then at the end showing that the number of rumours that have actually come to pass as transfers has been a very low percentage of those that are actually written about. Three per cent is not an unusual number.
But of course it is quite possible for fans of one club to reach the conclusion that it is justs their club that is losing out… It is just Arsenal that has bought too many players and can’t get rid of them. It is just Arsenal that is constantly under bidding for players. It is just Arsenal that is being too slow.
However, if it does seem like that – don’t worry – the same stories are being fed to supporters of each and every other club.
