By Arsenal Times
June 12 2025
Let me tell you about the time I accidentally created one of the most laughable transfer rumours you're likely to find, a rumour so nonsensical that it perfectly sums up the summer transfer window. And when I say I created it, I literally mean the manager of the club in question was asked about it in a press conference. This wasn't a silly little Twitter rumour; it generated interest in the world of football and at one point this player was even odds-on to join the club, according to Bet Victor. It may not have been odds-on actually, but he was definitely favourite to join this particular team - and all because of me.
I used to write about football and you can imagine the summer transfer window was our busy time. And we were judged - and kind of paid - depending on how many hits and clicks our articles got. I was pretty good at crafting headlines and if you had a really good headline for an opinion article that made no sense, you'd write it up anyway because, again, you're looking for people to click into it. All you needed was something very tenuous to link it together.
Like if I was still doing the job now I'd probably write an opinion article on why Arsenal should sign Kevin De Bruyne just because of the Manchester City connection and the fact you could headline it like this: 'Arsenal can now sign star who once pushed Mikel Arteta', in reference to the fact he shoved Arteta at the Emirates a few years ago.
This headline would bang in a major way. A lot of people would click into it. The 'can now' part implies it could actually happen, without breaking News Now rules, and there's a million little language tricks like that you learn to embellish headlines, to make opinion articles look a lot more credible from the headline end.
Back in 2016, I wrote an OPINION article about why Rangers should sign Robin van Persie. I can't find said article any longer so I can't remember what tenuous link I used to connect him and Rangers, but I think he was released by Fenerbahce at the time and Rangers, after being promoted back to the top tier of Scottish football, were sort of flying high again and there was a bit of buzz about them. When asked about it in a press conference, then-Rangers manager Mark Warburton said: "These stories do entertain me. I don't know where these things come from. I'm sure someone is laughing somewhere."
I know exactly how it started.
So I wrote my OPINION piece on why Rangers should sign Robin van Persie. Because I had a good headline, it did good numbers and eventually a Turkish website [I think Fanatik or one of these big Turkish sites] stumbled across it and due to the language barrier, interpreted my OPINION article as a transfer exclusive. And in the world of online football journalism, the ratio of sites that attribute sources in transfer articles to those that don't is literally 1:20. Most do not link to the original source. Fanatik or whoever it was did not link to my article. They ran it as their own transfer report. And then The Daily Record or The Scottish Sun see their copy and go, 'F*ck me look what's been reported in Turkey. Van Persie to Rangers! Then they pick it up. Then the bookmakers create a market for it. And then voila, it's a rumour. That's when the manager - Mark Warburton - gets asked about it in a press conference.
And this perfectly typifies the carnage and tail-chasing that is the summer transfer window.
What a lot of football fans don't realise about this time of the year is that transfer business is a business. Not just for the clubs in the Premier League, who splashed a combined £2.08 billion on transfers last summer, but it's also massive business for the endless amount of media outlets reporting on the transfers.
There is an insatiable demand for transfer-related content and that's why you see such a rich supply of it during the summer. It's because revenue goes through the roof for these websites from May to September, which is important because the hits plummet during international breaks and there's three of these relatively close together after the window shuts.
From a business perspective, you have to squeeze every drop of revenue out of the summer months to weather the storm that comes in September, October and November, before the rumour mill starts motoring again in time for January.
Again, it's a business.
Somebody is making money out of the Alejandro Garnacho to Arsenal rumour. Whether it's a young journalist on a pay-per-click agreement or the website that's getting huge traffic - and a spike in revenue - as a result, somebody, somewhere, is making money off it.
Once you realise it's a business, you must start treating every rumour like it's someone's attempt to make money rather than a scoop from a real journalist like David Orsntein. And that's another thing. You can't avoid soundbites from people like Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano and 100s of others during this time of the year because, like the websites, they make extra money too. They are paid guests on Sky Sports, other football shows, podcasts etc. These outlets aren't paying for them directly; they're paying to be able to put their name on their headlines, which in turn leads to more traffic. Which leads to more money.
The summer transfer is a carousel of carnage, lies and attempts to profit and it's going to be such a long summer for us as Arsenal supporters if we're treating everything that the rumour mill churns out as fact.
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Discussion started by Arsenal Times , 12/06/2025 08:40
Arsenal Times
12/06/2025 08:40
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