Why do so many rumoured transfers not happen?

By Tony Attwood

It is amusing to look down the stories running on the news accumulator services which report on each day’s action on

a) who is Arsenal going to buy

b) who has Arsenal just missed out on

c) who are Arsenal going to lose because someone is making a bid

Just look at the headlines:

• Arsenal sensational raid on Chelsea
• Moyes secretly meets Rooney
• Arsenal move for Torres
• Is Higuain good enough
• Arsenal bid for Grenier
• Marouane Fellaini
• Arsenal in for QPR goalkeeper.

Now we all know – and even those supporters who only read the sensational “Arsenal have missed out on signing the greatest player the universe has ever seen because Wenger was on holiday” type story, know – that 99.9% of these supposed transfers will never happen.  And that is not just for Arsenal – look at the rolling news sites for any of the larger clubs and you will see much the same going on.

But what has always interested me is where these stories come from.  Are they made up by sad and lonely young men sitting alone in their rooms, hopelessly waiting, watching and writing?  Or do they have a different point of origin?

I’ve written about this before, but since this year’s summer market seems even more crazed than last year’s I’m returning to the theme, and another look at the Vapour Transfer – a notion that has its origins in IT and which started to appear in football about five years ago.  It is now totally established, and indeed I suspect that this year the Vapour Transfer stories will exceed all others.

Origins of the Vapour Transfer

For IT companies like Microsoft and Apple, making things and selling them is never enough.  They like to go further with pre-ordering and pre-announcements in order to destabilise other companies that might be looking to enter the market (not to mention each other).  The aim is simple: the build up enough of an excitement so that even though there is no product to sell, people don’t buy your competitor’s product because they are caught up in the excitement.  In short you sell it before you’ve built it.

Football now has its own Vapourware.    It is the “rumour” (deliberately leaked) of a  suggestion that a player  might join a big club, when there is absolutely no possibility that he will join the club.  A “Vapour-transfer” in fact.

Now the Vapour Transfer can be used in all sorts of ways, and I will try and explain just three Vapour Transfers here.  And my point is: once you see the way in which Vapour Transfers work, suddenly the whole of the international transfer market becomes clear.

Vapour Transfer 1: The Distraction

For this example we’ll take the imaginary player Uglješa Kovačević, happily playing for the imaginary FK Frontosa Topola in the Serbian Vojvodina League East.   If the word is out that Arsenal have found him and are looking to buy him, then that might be the truth of the matter.  And indeed in this type of Vapour Transfer it is vital that the original story is at least believable.

(You can always tell the real Distraction Vapour Transfer from the mindless ramblings of a drunken journalist because at heart the Vapour Transfer might just be real.   Thus we all knew that the 26 June 2008  story by the Daily Mirror under the headline “Arsenal line up shock move for Peter Crouch” was gibberish because Crouch had none of the qualities that Wenger looks for in players.  Thus this was not a Vapour Transfer in any regard but a newspaper filling a blank page.)

If the Uglješa Kovačević story is a Vapour Transfer of the Distraction type it will be put out to the press to put Arsenal’s rivals off the true story which is (again using imaginary names) that Arsenal are getting very interested in Dragan Bošković from FCKA Budućnosta in Montenegro.

If it works, no one else realises during the secret negotiations that Mr Wenger sees something in young Dragan that no one else sees, so no rivals step in, the price remains reasonable and the deal is done and no football clubs are harmed in the process – unless someone is silly enough to go and buy Uglješa Kovačević merely on the basis that a rumour circulates that Arsenal were watching him.  (It happens ever summer.  Clubs buy players without fully checking the player out, simply because Arsenal or another big club were rumoured to be after him).

Vapour Transfer 2: The Deception

But supposing Real Manchester (an imaginary club) did all this hype about Uglješa Kovačević, when in fact there was no deal at all going on anywhere.  And supposing they didn’t just let it slip that one of their vast array of scouts is out there looking, but instead suggested that this young player is so good that their chief scout was “ordered” to “drop everything” and damn well get out to Serbia and start negotiating.

That would be a much more sinister matter for it takes the minor misinformation which any club worth its salt should tumble and do nothing about, up to the level of selling a player whose qualities don’t exist.  It’s a con simply to use up the Real Manchester scouting resources.  Do it enough times and they won’t have a scout left trailing a real talent.  False trails are everywhere.

Vapour Transfer 3: The Destructive Expectation

And now, consider Robin van Nasri or Samir Persiei.  Supposing the story goes around that Juventus or Man City or Chelsea or PSG… want one of these players, even if that story is not true.

This of course is exactly the story that the media like.  They don’t have to do any work, because the story is fed to them.  No journalists on expensive trips to Serbia hunting down the player or the team.  Nothing.

But here’s the tip – you can always tell one of these tales because the papers have a code that they use to announce such a story.  And that code is… yes, you know, “Alert”, “Red Alaert”, “High Alert” and so on.  And because the bloggers tend to cut and paste a lot, they use the phrase too, not realising that it is the give-away line  “Man City have been put on red alert following the training ground fall out between Southampton boss and the Saints young super star Uglješa Kovačević – who has only one year left on his contract.”

The story breaks, and the player (who isn’t quite in tune with the fact that “red alert” is a codeword for “ain’t happening”) thinks about all the money he could make with a move.  His head is turned so he says, “I’m not signing a new contract.”  Remember at this stage Juve or Man C don’t actually want the player and have no thought of the player – but now the whole story is running.  The point is not to turn the club, but to turn the head of a young player who has potential.

Now also the Man City fans and Juve fans are excited by the press story (which remember has no truth) and so are expecting the signing.  And Southampton, who have done nothing wrong, suddenly find that a player in whom they have invested a fortune, is planning to leave when there was every expectation that he would stay.

So who benefits from this?  Several clubs actually.  Firstly, if we have the expectation that Southampton will do moderately well this season then any club that is expecting to have a hard time of it is interested in disrupting  Southampton, as they might then be dragged down into the relegation positions.  (After all a club that is going to have a poor season has no worries if three other clubs are going to have an even worse season).

Secondly, the manager of a big club that is supposed to be signing top players has a problem.  OK if he refuses to be drawn in, and the club win trophies, no one notices.  But if he refuses to deal and his club don’t win as much as expected, it will look bad – no matter what happens to the youngster. He will not only be criticised for not winning stuff, he’ll also be criticised for not signing this young man when he was there for the taking.  If the manager signs the youngster however he could well find that the youngster is nowhere near as good as he thought – and so he has wasted money.

As for Southampton, if they lose the player, their fans become dispirited, they are seen as being an early selling club, and they lose out on what could have been a big transfer fee in a few years time.

As I say, this is a re-run of last year’s article on the subject, but since all the news we are getting is of Vapour Transfers I thought I’d run this amended version again.  More on the topic anon.

The books…

• Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football – Arsenal’s early years
• Making the Arsenal – how the modern Arsenal was born in 1910
• The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal FC: crowd behaviour at the early matches

The sites from the same team…

• Referee Decisions – just what are the refs up to this season?
• The Arsenal History Blog from the AISA Arsenal History Society
• School sports minibuses: providing your child’s school with a bus
• Parent News – what is going on in schools these days?
• Dyscalculia on line test and support