Am I right in thinking that the club nowadays wouldn’t tell journalists ‘on or off the record’ if they were interested in a player or not?
Also, wouldn’t any club employee leaking such information be receiving their cards immediately?
I'm sure that clubs wanting to offload a player (not saying that this is the case here) will happily talk to the press as a way of generating interest, as will their agent. However, I agree that anyone caught leaking information without permission is going to get the sack.