- One example proves that buying more and more players leads to a decline in performance.
- Transfer doomscrolling: Arsenal are having a bad summer, and you know it
It is one of the most common forms of newspaper and blog post at this time of year:
The notion is simple: but also very curious. That having seen one club bid for a player, other clubs come rushing in and bid more. The first club (often Arsenal) is then blamed for being really slow at the start, taking its time and letting others come in, and above all for not offering a realistic price.are often beaten to the transfer.
But there are two other ways of looking at this rather than simply seeing it always as a case of Arsenal laziness and stupidity. One is that the story initially was made up. If you real a lot of the transfer tales you will see that most of them quote another blog or newspaper as a source. Very few quote someone within the club.
So go back to the other blogger or journalist, and generally you will find he/she will give the source as another blogger or journalist. Round and round you go.
Now generally we what we find is that each blogger quotes another blogger, but if we get back to a newspaper we find they say “sources within the club claim that.”
So maybe all these stories are true, and clubs do in fact only get 2% or 3% of the players they are after. That does seem like a very low number and an awfully large amount of wasted time and effort. But let us have a look at how it works out.
Arsenal are interested in Player X. They discuss the matter quietly and away from reporters but with the selling club. No one knows about this because both seller and buyer assure each other that if this story leaks, the deal is off.
But of course reporters want something to write about, so Arsenal (and I have no evidence that Arsenal do this, but I rather suspect many clubs do) “leak” a story to a journalist that they are interested in Player Y. The story is sort of true in that if that player became available at a low price, Arsenal would go for him bewcause that would be a bargain, but everyone knows in reality that is not going to happen.
However, journalists have copy to write so the scribbler gets ever so excited and pump out the story, and other clubs look and think, “Wow, Y must be better than we thought.” So they get their team of scouts and investigators working on the case of Y. Those investigators come back with a report that says, “either this is a hoax, or Arsenal have lost it.”
Meanwhile, Arsenal quietly tie up the deal with X – but agree with his club and the player that that sale will not be announced for a while. So that story goes quiet, and the journalists are forced either to make up something totally fanciful (known in the trade as embellishing the story) or else they run the one about Arsenal being very slow and other clubs are getting very close. At the same time they are running the stories about Y.
Arsenal look like complete idiots not finishing off the purchase of X (which the media say was ready to be signed) and seemingly now trying with Y – who they also don’t get. Then quietly, Arsenal announce the purchase of X, leaving the media to proclaim that Arsenal have failed to buy player Y (whom they never wanted in the first place).
Of course there are other tales too, such as Arsenal transfer news LIVE: Martinelli set to STAYwhen in fact there was never any chance of him leaving, so throw some of those in and you have the full packet.
But why is it like this? There are two reasons. First clubs have a strict agreement with each other never ever to let anything leak until the deal is done and signed. Clubs that are known to be leaky are by and large boycotted and the most serious clubs will only deal with them for huge discounts to compensate for the hassle. Being secretive about a deal helps everyone except the handful of desperate clubs who are trying to sell, sell, sell.
Second clubs don’t like players who leak news of their impending transfer, as generally that indicates a player who is liable to leak anything, including injury news, tactics, etc. Good players can be sold because of their inability to keep their mouths shut.
And tactics is an important point here. All the top clubs have teams who study the way the forthcoming opposition have played in recent games. But tactics do change from game to game, and that news of how a club is going to cope with an injury, or simply make a tactical change needs to be kept secret. This is why the team news actually is secret until the two clubs simultaneously hand their team sheets to the referee one hour before kick-off, and then the line-up is public.
The fact that only 3% of transfers (at most) that are highlighted in the media actually happen ought to be enough to nullify this sort of commentary, but it isn’t because the media then fill up their column inches by blaming the clubs which are not doing so well, for not buying the players they were duped into believing the clubs were after.
And since we now have a situation in which even coming second is deemed as a failure, that means there are generally 19 clubs that can be blamed for being too slow when it comes to transfer deals.
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Second
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