july 16th
07.34 – There were a couple of articles in yesterday’s Mirror that I was going to link to and say something about. But I’m not going to. I’ll tell you why.
I’m bored. I’m bored of witless hacks like Martin Lipton, Mark Irwin, Steve Curry, John Sadler et al bleating on about Arsenal, our lack of money, how many of players are going to Chelsea and how many decades it’s going to be before Ashburton Grove is built.
It’s boring because it’s made up. I don’t doubt these fellas don’t have some information regarding Arsenal, but they don’t have much. They get snippets here and there. Things are taken out of context, embellished, regurgitated and printed with a red top every morning. Any Arsenal supporter knows that as a club, Arsenal are notoriously tight lipped. They generally never give you any more than you need to know, and often much less than that.
It’s a source of frustration for some fans. It’s also a source of frustration for journos who don’t get any good info on what’s really going on inside Highbury. So they create and invent and falsify and manufacture a situation where they think the club will have to comment because fans are restless reading this stuff and blah blah blah. But Arsenal rarely comment. So they keep making stuff up. And Arsenal still don’t comment. And so on.
Just as an indication as to how little of what’s in the papers is actually based on any kind of fact, here’s a small number of the players the ‘club with no money’ has been linked with since the end of the season. Harry Kewell, Patrick Kluivert, Philippe Mexes, Abiati, Claudio Lopez, Brad Freidel, Thomas Sorenson, Dida, Gregory Coupet, Oscar Cordoba, Sebastian Saja, Jaap Stam, Frank de Boer, Lucio, Philip Cocu, Canizares, Cannavaro, William Gallas, John Terry, Basturk, Stephen Carr, Guti, Nakata, Ayala, Olaf Mellberg, Lorent Robert…..and countless others.
We’ll never know how many of those the club had real interest in. Maybe 10% at most. We’ll just never know. What we do know is that 90% of them are made up crap. Without question, it’s monkey at typewriters stuff. And most people recognise that when it comes to transfer stories. So why is it that when the The Sun or The Mirror prints a story with no quotes (the best you get is a ‘source’ or a ‘person close to X’), no basis in fact, it’s believed straight away?
I’m not saying everything they print is untrue. That would be a very naive viewpoint, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. When it comes to Arsenal, they guys in the newspapers only know what we tell them. So stories about Vieira demanding 3 top signings or he’ll leave can be dismissed. Stories about Vieira going to Chelsea can be dismissed. Roman and his cronies might want Paddy, but Arsenal will never sell. That fact – which should be apparent to all Arsenal fans – won’t stop the sycophantic press writing stories because they want to be friends with a Russian billionaire. Forget the facts. Just write something that sounds like you know what you’re talking about. Easy.
What I’m trying to say is this. Nobody but the people inside Arsenal know exactly what’s going on inside Arsenal. If Peter Hill-Wood says the finances are’t causing him sleepless nights, we have to take him at face value. If Martin Lipton in the Mirror says it’s the beginning of the end for the Gunners, I’m not sure we should believe him. When Mark Irwin says Vieira will leave for Manchester United, I know I don’t believe him. When Arsene Wenger says he’s ‘positive’ that Vieira will sign a new deal, I believe him. You get the idea.
You’ll have gathered there’s no Arsenal news yet this morning.
