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The Silly Season

Published by Ian John on June 18, 2009

I’ve held off writing this article this week in the vain hope of something more than just football transfer rumours being something to comment upon. Lamentably, because we are now in the silly season in football terms, nothing vaguely interesting has happened to report on in any great detail.

Ever since the story broke last week of Cristiano Ronaldo’s proposed £80m move to Real Madrid, concrete transfer stories have been somewhat thin on the ground. This is mainly because the vast majority of footballing staff are either still on holiday, or have just returned from a break in the sun. This means that the story writers have a rather large void to fill on the sports pages each day and thus any potential transfer activity is reported with a feverish excitement that borders on the orgasmic.

If you want concrete transfer news hidden underneath all the meandering speculation then here is a neat summary of what English Premier League teams have done so far this off season in full…
Gareth Barry has joined Manchester City from Aston Villa for a fee reportedly of £12m
Nils Zander has also joined Manchester City from Schalke 04. Who? A 16 year old German defender apparently. I bet that has Real Madrid quaking in their boots.
Fulham have signed defender Stephen Kelly from Birmingham City on a free.
Birmingham City have signed Scott Dann from Coventry City and Christian Benitez from Santos Laguna.
Blackburn Rovers have spent big, £52,000 on Nikos Giannakopoulos and have also signed Elrio Van Heerden on a free.
Everton have signed Shkodran Mustafi and Anton Peterlin both on undisclosed fees.
Hull have signed Steven Mouyokolo again for an undisclosed fee.
West Ham have signed Peter Kurucz for an undisclosed fee.
Wolves have signed Marcus Hahnemann on a free and also Serbian defender Nenad Milijas.
And that is it.

Of course transfers such as these won’t see people rushing to the newsagent to read about the latest signing. I doubt most Everton fans know they’ve signed those players and there is even less of a chance they will know which clubs they were signed from. This is why the papers invent this silly season when speculation and nonsense is reported as fact. Usually this is just the domain of Fox News but at this time of the year all other major news outlets do like to indulge themselves too. It isn’t an exercise in bringing the freshest news to people, simply an excuse to sell newspapers by making outlandish and often unprovable and unsubstantiated rumours.

Look at David Villa’s situation in Spain. In the past week we have gone from him being set to join Real Madrid as the third galactico. Nothing happened immediately so it was then reported that Chelsea were set to snatch him from under Real Madrid’s noses. Still nothing happened. Next thing we knew Barcelona were in talks with the player and persuading him to the Nou Camp. Nope that didn’t happen. So what do you know! Manchester United are now looking to bring him in! Nothing occurred over the next day or two and you could see the embattled sports hack panicking. So what did we get this morning? Well apparently Real Madrid are going to sign him again… you watch if nothing happens in the next few days, Chelsea or Manchester United’s interest will come to the fore once again.

It’s crazy what is reported for news at this stage of the season. “Barcelona might sign Javier Mascherano!” scream the headlines today in the press local to me. Yes indeed, they might. They may also sign Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard, they may also sign Tony Hibbert, they may go for a meal one evening and be abducted by aliens. They may offer Lionel Messi in a straight swap deal for Lucas Leiva, although I admit the last of these scenario’s is almost totally implausible. “May” isn’t news. “May” is speculation (and the fifth month of the year). “May” is lazy journalism, it is creating the news rather than reporting it.

Almost as enjoyable as these non-stories are the messageboards that proliferate around the internet. You have probably seen many, where a story is posted stating something that is obviously plain fact and not at all speculation. For example, Manchester United want to buy Fernando Torres. You then get a plethora of barely literate, neanderthal “fans” posting a tirade of foul mouthed vitriol against their rivals based on some non-event reported by a lazy hack who just wanted to see his hit rate increase for the day. I am all for banter between fans, but please keep it within the realms of reality! You may as well berate each other about which is the best fairy story rather than the best fictitious transfer story.

The season can’t start soon enough for me.

Image courtesy of **samal marr** on flickr.com

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