Not Andy Naylor
Well-known member
This time of the football year is usually a prime one for made-up nonsense in the papers and on the websites, but this summer has been especially ridiculous. 99 percent of it is complete rubbish.
Example - the Dunk to Leicester story in 2019. Leicester had just sold Maguire so the ignorant assumed that they would be using some of the money to buy a direct replacement. They didn't bother finding out that Leicester already had Soyuncu ready to go after a year's grooming. Instead they seized on a highly speculative twitter suggestion (ironically from an Albion fan) that Dunk might go there. An unscrupulous agent (of a player at a different club) fueled the fire and "confirmed" the stories in order to put pressure on a client's club to give his boy a new contract in case we were looking at him as to replace Dunk. Meanwhile, anybody who bothered to contact Dunky's agent was assured that he was "97 percent" certain to stay. But almost nobody did.
This is the sort of 2+2=5 guesswork that goes on, put together by "journalists" who don't have real contacts at clubs that they can check with, or don't bother calling in case it knocks their story down (eg the "Bloom to hold inquest with Potter" Mail tale). It led to The Sun writing that a certain manager wanted to buy a player from his former club, not knowing that he had left that club over an affair with that same player's wife.
So while Ben White may indeed end up at Arsenal/Chelsea/Everton/Man City, most of the stuff out there comes from clickbait providers repeating each other's rumours. It really is the definition of an echo chamber. I'm much more inclined to believe Brian Owen than any of the unpaid interns on the online desks of the Express and Mirror. Brian, you see, has this old-fashioned habit of getting on the phone and checking stories with people who might know..
Example - the Dunk to Leicester story in 2019. Leicester had just sold Maguire so the ignorant assumed that they would be using some of the money to buy a direct replacement. They didn't bother finding out that Leicester already had Soyuncu ready to go after a year's grooming. Instead they seized on a highly speculative twitter suggestion (ironically from an Albion fan) that Dunk might go there. An unscrupulous agent (of a player at a different club) fueled the fire and "confirmed" the stories in order to put pressure on a client's club to give his boy a new contract in case we were looking at him as to replace Dunk. Meanwhile, anybody who bothered to contact Dunky's agent was assured that he was "97 percent" certain to stay. But almost nobody did.
This is the sort of 2+2=5 guesswork that goes on, put together by "journalists" who don't have real contacts at clubs that they can check with, or don't bother calling in case it knocks their story down (eg the "Bloom to hold inquest with Potter" Mail tale). It led to The Sun writing that a certain manager wanted to buy a player from his former club, not knowing that he had left that club over an affair with that same player's wife.
So while Ben White may indeed end up at Arsenal/Chelsea/Everton/Man City, most of the stuff out there comes from clickbait providers repeating each other's rumours. It really is the definition of an echo chamber. I'm much more inclined to believe Brian Owen than any of the unpaid interns on the online desks of the Express and Mirror. Brian, you see, has this old-fashioned habit of getting on the phone and checking stories with people who might know..
