It is that time of the year, the domestic season is over and transfer speculation steps up a gear, especially for a top six English Premier League side like Arsenal.
It is not easy to sort out what is real and what is plain nonsense but there are ways that you can at least clear away some of the smoke and narrow the rumours down to some form of credibility.
Just because a particular piece of gossip comes from a well-known journalist or a nationally known media outlet does not immediately make it credible, they are just as likely to feed everyone a line of BS as anyone else.
A little bit of research goes a long way, it is fairly easy to find the original source of a piece of gossip. Providing attribution is standard practice these days, as an example today the Metro published an article claiming Matteo Guendouz can convince Alexis Claude-Maurice to sign for Arsenal. The Metro links that claim to a report in the Mirror and there it ends in terms of attribution and so, the original source can be assumed to be the Mirror.
The next step is to analyse the article in question, looks for quotes, sources or even why they are making the claim they are making.
Well, the Mirror has no quotes, no sources, named or unnamed and on the face of it the only thing that comes close to backing up their claim is that Matteo Guendouz and Alexis Claude-Maurice previously played together.
That tells me that it is just an opinion piece dressed up as speculation and therefore practically worthless and that took me less than three minutes to work out.
Now, not every piece of gossip can be so easily researched and analysed and most of the time who can be bothered, right? But when you do come across an article that claims a player is set to sign for your club, a player you really want to sign, then spending just a little bit of time doing some checking will at least let you know if you are reading BS or something that may actually happen.
Alexis Claude-Maurice’s stats are not impressive as a Ligue 2 striker
I like rumors but this one is silly. Arsenal could have gotten a more promising English striker from the Championship or League One instead
Or play the English wingers we have and don’t buy anybody. Saka is very highly rated, and Nelson deserves a chance next season. We need to buy an experienced winger. Not another `7/18 year old foreigner, when we have our own talents waiting to get a shot. Everybody is so focused on finding the next Mbappe, and won’t even look at their own academy.
I look at it like this. 99% of what we read over the summer will be pure fabrication. I know this, because it happens EVERY SUMMER with Arsenal rumours.
So just enjoy your summers, have a beer, get a tan (in my case, burn), and chill out.
Given we have Auba, and Laca, hopefully, for the first time in about a decade, we don’t see a Benzema to Arsenal rumour. Talk about lazy journalism!
This has become my attitude a couple of seasons ago. I just bookmark Ornstein’s Twitter, and outside of that I just go about my business. A lot of fake news out there an sites like the Sun, Daily Mail, are desperate for clicks.
We’re playing a behind closed doors friendly on Thursday (at London Colney) against LASK Linz from Austria…… please no injuries ??
Sue, this is why I keep calling the fans’ favourite Iwobi-san:
okayafrica.com/alex-iwobi-inpadisu-nollywood-trailer/
I know I’m not the only one that have been imagining Iwobi wearing a kimono and carrying a katana to do a ritual before the football game
Yikes ? you have too much time on your hands gotanidea ? are you into martial arts then?
And there I was thinking he went to parties before the game!! ?
I used to like taekwondo but prefer to watch football now
Nice one ?
Sue, are you on Arseblog too?? They have thumbs there, how’s the experience?
I look on there occasionally, QD…
Haven’t you been on there, QD? Tbf the thumbs don’t really bother me.. I thought they would once they left here, but I don’t mind it at all…. some of the comments on there are hilarious & others not so (the c word is used a lot ?)
?? I was there looking for the much sought after @Fatboy Gooney because I remember him saying he moved there because of the thumbs system. I came across your posts in the process. It looks like a nice blog though it didn’t seem to have as much traffic as we have over here.
I don’t look on there as much now, too busy on here ?
Is that the only blog with thumbs now? Depending on what the article is, I sometimes read other blogs (occasionally comment) it just amazes me how different they all are.. like on here, 4 or 5 articles a day (I’d say arseblog is the same) but others only have 1 a day & are very quiet compared to on here!
The best one for transfer rumours is the mail who seems to say everything is a do e deal
Good article Mr Admin and sound comments which do, however, beg the following obvious question; why do YOU constantly post articles that do precisely what you say we should disregard and are mere unfounded transfer speculation?