There’s some transfer rumour stories that Media Muppets can smell the BS a mile off. Normally, they are written by a) The Metro, b) HITC (purely in it for the Newsnow click-bait, so please don’t click!) and c) Talksport.
Today Talksport rolled out a peach that makes no logical sense at all.
Headline:
Aston Villa transfer report: Tim Sherwood plotting audacious move for £20m-rated Monaco star
Spiel:
‘Aston Villa are weighing up a move for Monaco star Aymen Abdennour.
Barcelona and Roma have expressed an interest in the 26-year-old, while Liverpool are also said to be monitoring the situation.
But now, according to Foot Mercato, Aston Villa are now contemplating an audacious move for Abdennour before the transfer window closes.
Villans boss Tim Sherwood is keen to bolster his squad this summer and still has money left over following the sales of Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph.
Monaco are reluctant to part with their Tunisia international but maybe willing to sell if a club splashes out over £20m.’
Evaluation:
1. Are Villa interested in Abdennour?At £20m? No f**king way!
2. £20m for a player who at 26-year-old would give Villa minimal opportunity for a profit or a decent return. £20m? when you already have Richards, Clark and Okore? There are areas where Sherwood would invest £20m first. Villa would never pay £20m for a centre-back, period. £10M tops for a really good one would be your guide price.
3. ‘Still has money left over following the sales of Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph’, yeah, maybe around a two or three million, but not the amount that would see Villa spend crazy money on a centre-back.
4. Do Talksport know anything about Randy Lerner’s recent fiscal policy at Villa, towards transfers?
5. Not even Barcelona, Roma or Liverpool – all the clubs mentioned in the Talksport article – would part with 20m for the player.
6. This is clearly a click-bait story with the ‘£20m-rated centre-back’ description. It shows you how much they respect the intelligence of their readership.
Media Muppets Rating: 9/10
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HITC is better than reflected in this opinion piece, and without the click bait I wouldn’t have found this site. Maybe some wish I hadn’t. Also point 4 is dead wrong, Lerner’s recent transfer history is pretty good, figure we spent about 13M more than Benteke and Delph got us, and CB9’s full price wasn’t paid up front if I can believe what I read also maybe the new DOF is not finished yet. Good news that we’re being linked with such players, any publicity is good publicity. Even if the reality is we have been buying heavily so are a good tool. On this one and Traore I will wait to see the Official AVFC announcement. Lacovitti however is exciting, finally poaching someone else talent if it goes. (credit HITC =)
Check out Lerner’s net spend. Very conservative in recent seasons.
Roughly 20 million (net) spent in the last weeks, admittedly I had to wait for the Traoré news. But do you really want me to calc net total spend? Should I do it since he has owned the club or only include the time from the start of FFP? Then can I convert it to Lerner’s home currency to see his actual cost?
He’s made some whopping mistakes, but Lerner has reached into his pocket.
Hafta add, FFP and the 2009 credit crunch was the cause of the spend problem I would argue. IMHO Lerner will spend when he can, and is doing that right now.
To be fair – stories like this are not usually generated from the tiny teenage minds of ‘journalist’ interns seeking to fill another long afternoon – most often – such tales originate with an agent – who puts a word in a chosen ear knowing it will be published – and aid whatever cause he is promoting.
The interconnected nature of modern media now means that a local or regional story now replicates itself across the web and spawns hundreds of clones, each adding or subtracting as logic, imagination, and the need to create a ‘story’ dictates.
The real difference is that quality media don’t publish such thin items – as they are merely hearsay – and unsubstantiated. On the web though it is different. Web channels have publish to retain their ranking in search engine metrics – and so they publish anything and everything, and they do it often. Far too often. It is part of the Google tyranny which sees such rubbish constantly regurgitated as fact.
If you really want someone to blame for the muppetry however – Rupert Murdoch is your man and Sun readers are the cause.
When he was in deep conflict with the print unions in his early ownership of The Sun – Rupert couldn’t wait for match reports to come in and get the paper printed by his skeleton staffed printers in time for the morning paper run. So he filled the back pages with transfer gossip instead and printed the match reports a day later. When the conflict ended they stopped with the gossip – only for the Sun readership to raise a mighty hue and cry – so they put it back in.
Rumour and gossip had never featured so prominently in sports journalism before – now it is the norm – and sadly this seems to be the same with most of the other content.
Wow, good read.
MOMS: Perpetuating the “Miserable Brummie” stereotype since 2012.
??? What do you mean by that? If you prefer to believe BS, then good luck to you.
Couldn’t agree more biggest load of cobblers this week, I’m just completely fed up with reading it we are linked with at least 3 or 4 players every day if the Traoere thing is true apart from it so say being a 3 year contract with a buy back clause it might be a decent signing, but I’m not holding my breath, I will only believe it when I see a club photo of him in a Villa shirt. I like the fact that we have all of theses new signings but enough is enough or we will never gel as a team, and most of the new players will surely get fed up with bench warming.