Without football, media outlets, Twitter users, blogers and YouTuber’s have gone early with their daily bile of transfer speculation.

We all know that 95% of the players we are linked with over a summer we will not sign. Transfer speculation is just a way to increase hits, to gain advertising revenue.

Over a 3 month period from June – August, we will be linked to over 100 players. We are lucky if we have signed 5 for the first team.

Transfer speculation is not actually completely fake.

Most of the time, Arsenal are scouting a player, watching them. But any one time we will be scouting 100s of players. There is a huge gap to bridge from us scouting a player to starting negotiations with them.

Ivan Gazidis once said “those who know, won’t speak. Those who speak, won’t know.” 

Yes, some journalists will get a heads up from someone at the club when a deal is very close (literally within 24 hours of them signing), or a medical is taking place. But beyond that, those journalists, tweet users, bloggers or whatever who claim to have sources do not. That they are making it up.

5 of the top 6 stories this morning (writing this Friday) on NewsNow are transfer speculation.

“‘Done deal’ – Loads of Arsenal fans buzzing after tweet about Thomas Partey” – The Transfer Tavern
“Report: Arsenal want £70m PL star Klopp called ‘unplayable’, agent hints at move” – HITC
“Report: Arteta is so keen to sign 26-year-old for Arsenal and he’s open to the move” – HITC
“Arsenal can repeat Matteo Guendouzi transfer trick to sign Eduardo Camavinga and save millions” – Football.London
“Denilson explains how Arsene Wenger tried to save his Arsenal career” – Mirror.co.uk
“Arsenal set to agree on £10 million defender transfer claims Ornstein” – Just Arsenal News (Weblog)

Going through the “latest news”, the majority of the stories follow the same vein. The fact is, transfer speculation makes money.

There is a YouTuber out there that who is making 4 or 5 videos a day where he basically reads out Arsenal transfer stories from NewsNow for $4 a video in advertising revenue.

Some blogs out there write a blog every time we are linked to a player. They hide the name in the title, often replacing it with the height and position of the player. All for hits.

This is not people blogging for their own enjoyment, or to share their opinion or knowledge. This is people sitting their trying to generate content, spreading fake news, for a few dollars (and they literally get a few dollars per video or blog).

Whilst everyone is at home, there are still plenty of good Arsenal blogs to read. Some bloggers go out of their way to connect with bloggers in France or Spain to get a view on a player that we are linked with from someone who has seen them play regularly. This is good content.

Sadly you have to sift through a lot of rubbish to find the good stuff.

If you want a news aggregator that blocks the majority of transfer speculation, I would suggest using The Highbury Library.

Transfer speculation is something we have to deal with year round. It intensifies in the out of the season. But with no football to write about, some have gone early with their speculation to generate the hits, generate the revenue.

Have a good weekend

Keenos