By Sir Hardly Anyone
These days the central core of football journalism is “is it cheap?” A story that requires detailed analysis is of course expensive to put together because it takes up time. A story that requires original research is even more time consuming and thus even more expensive and thus even more disliked.
But a story that is made up or simply copied from someone else is a lot cheaper, and simply requires some imagination.
However these days most writers on football don’t even have that attribute of imagination, so the stories are repeated from elsewhere. No analysis, no research, no originality, just a rerun of someone else’s story.
Welcome to the world of transfer rumours. The cheapest form of football writing on the planet which manages to treat all fans of all clubs with equal levels of contempt. And if you want proof of this, just flip through some of the transfer stories and see how many of them are original, and how many cite another source. The answer you will probably find is around 99.9% cite another newspaper, blog or journalist as their source. No one ever admits to having done any research. And surely if they had done, they would do.
One of the tricks within this game of dirt cheap journalism and reporting is that although Arsenal don’t really need any new players the media are fixated on trying to persuade us that we do. This trick is used because if it were agreed that what with us being a mere five goals away from the Champions League, and a raft of youngsters coming through, we didn’t need anyone, the stories would be blown.
And there would be no football news.
And then the favourite post-window story of Arsenal screwing up in the market and how it is going to be a dire season is run. And that will be trotted out this summer even though Arsenal spent record sums last summer – and we sank DOWN the league rather than going up.
As our recent chart showed we just needed to score five more goals in key games and we would have been in the top four now. A side that close does not need to be disrupted.
But that doesn’t make for good news, so the invention of transfers goes on and on, along with insane stories about Arsenal paying massive pay offs to the agents and other wasteful tactics.
Here are the latest
1: NEW – Szoboszlai
Sempre Milan tell us that “Milan and Arsenal target Szoboszlai drops big hint over possible destination”. The lad is a 19 year old central midfielder who plays for Red Bull Salzburg. He has played for them 44 times so far.
2: UPDATE – Nunez
The Metro announces that Arsenal, Everton and West Ham are all “in the race to sign Athletic Bilbao’s Unai Nunez this summer, but they face competition from big clubs across Europe.”
He’s a 23-year-old centre-back and seemingly has a release clause of £27m. The player has refused to sign a new contract with Bilbao have been trying to get Nunez to sign a new contract. The Metro blames AS
3: NEW – Wout Weghorst
Wout Weghorst is a name that will get racist commentators giggling, as they like laughing at foreigners names, especially when they realise they can say Wout Weghorst from Wolfsburg. He will cost £32m.
This comes from Teamtalk who allege they got it from the Daily Express who say they got it from Bild.
The player is a Dutch striker who is tipped as the replacement for Aubameyang having scored 33 in 66 games.
4: Update – Malang Sarr
“Report: Arsenal have offer in for Malang Sarr, player has recently left Nice”
This is a 21 year old French defender. It may be noted that we already have Sokratis, Mustafi, Chambers Holding and Mavropanos. The comes from TBR football who claim they got it from Marca.
We will add all these to the chart and publish a revised edition shortly. This is after all a record breaking season for Arsenal transfers.
- Arsenal are just five goals from being top four.
- Ticket arrangements for the new season: is Big Brother watching the fans?
- Is Santi Cazorla now outperforming EVERY Arsenal player except Aubameyang?
