http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/premierleague/2012/08/22/bakgrunden-till-forsaljningen-av-song/

Football journalism these days.

A journalist at Sweden's biggest sportsnewspaper wrote an entire article for his premier league blog at the newspaper based on AFCAMDEN's account.

Now, I trust a lot of what AFCAMDEN says, but the extent to which professional journalists are now trawling twitter for scoops and articles is pathetic. I started seeing it a couple of years ago when The Daily Mail started stealing stories form that teenager Jamie Sanderson.

Mentioned that last week but TimBO pointed out that the more reputable papers still check sources and don't print complete lies.
Difficult to blame the on-line news services really - the likes of AFCCAMDEN have achieved oracle like status just because people "believe"
Throw scraps of info at people in 160 character bites and it's all over the forums and taken seriously in seconds.
If the news sites wait for the actual facts they lose traffic.

Some reporters are good though. I wrote to Johan Esk at DN a couple of months ago. Wanted him to do a piece about the difficult realtionship between the clubs in Spain and their government/banks. Lo and behold - article about just that in today's paper! Decent one as well!

y va marquer wrote:

Mentioned that last week but TimBO pointed out that the more reputable papers still check sources and don't print complete lies.

Trust me, they do. All of them. We're way past the days when first-hand information was a necessity to establish credibility. A lot of rumours are reported by journalists who simply refer to "(our) sources". The implication, of course, is that the sources have been in contact with the newspaper when in reality the information might stem from a tweet or a blog post by someone claiming to be in the know. It's common practise. The way it's justified is that if the rumour is out there and hasn't been refuted then it's not considered a lie.

They don't usually report those rumours as fact though, a lot of the articles are more like opinion pieces on what could be happening.

It largely depends on what kind of articles we're talking about. A lot of them, particularly when referring back to stories that have been previously reported by the same paper, simply "de-source" them. What was a piece of second- or third party information has now become an accepted truth and opinions or rumours have turned into facts. It looks better that way. More professional.

In those particular type of articles it's usually very obvious that there is no real link between the news as reported and those directly connected and involved in the story.

Any time you read "our sources" or "a source at the club" you just know that one tiny hint of a story has been blown up into somebody's idea of what might be going on.

Except when it's an obvious leak, like the comments regarding Song's contract negotiations the other day which came from a 'source' (possibly Dein).

Not questioning his ability coz he was good for us but even we did not consider him the most technical of players or even disciplined in terms of remaining in the position of defensive cover. Maybe we were wrong and it was Wenger's plan all along for him to be our quasi-playmaker but can anyone see him doing this at Barca where even Cesc has had to adapt his game as they are stacked in this department. Only position is the Buscuit position but even Mascherano failed to dislodge Busquets so Song is surely headed down the Hleb route which would be a shame.

I'd only take AFCamden's article (or Dean Harris, I guess, as he puts his name as) as his personal observation. Wouldn't take it for a fact, but he does seem very well regarded and he doesn't tweet about every single thing claiming to be ITK. The Song thing seems to be a bee-in-the-bonnet he's had.

I thought it was a load of rubbish myself, and largely uncorroborated.

The part I'm inclined to believe is that the club reacted badly to the discovery that Song was being pimped by Dein on the market with 3 years left to run on his contract.

I believe that happened because rumour and leaks seem to agree with it, and if it did it was an act of very bad faith by both Song and Dein. That's not how you squeeze your employer for a raise.

Our response in selling Song is interesting though, and it's not something we had to do.

We had to draw a line some where. While the club would bend over backwards to accommodate van Persie and Fabregas, I think they felt Song was replaceable and could be made an example out of.

Yes, I think an example has been made, I also suspect Dein has been "seen off" (not that the club can control who the players choose to be their agents).

And yes, Song's a good player but he's nowhere near the Fabregas or Van Persie season-saving category.

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/wenger-i-expect-more-loans-than-transfers

"You can see by my grey hair that it's the transfer window!" joked Wenger at his pre-match press conference. "Every year, it's difficult. Last year was a bit more difficult because we lost Diaby and Wilshere [to injury] and on top of that we lost Fabregas and Nasri. "If you lose four players of that calibre… well, you can imagine. This year, we lost class player but it's one. "I expect there will be a lot of loans [before the deadline], but very few transfers," "Why? Because in Europe there is no money and in England the prices are high so see maybe a lot of movement but a lot of loans."

Ouch. I suppose it's obvious Wenger wasn't a huge fan given how open we were to selling Mr. Song.

Burnwinter wrote:

Yes, I think an example has been made, I also suspect Dein has been "seen off" (not that the club can control who the players choose to be their agents).

And yes, Song's a good player but he's nowhere near the Fabregas or Van Persie season-saving category.

We should convince all our shitsters to sign up with Dein as none of their agents seem particularly capable of shifting them.

Ricky1985 wrote:

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-archive/wenger-i-expect-more-loans-than-transfers

"You can see by my grey hair that it's the transfer window!" joked Wenger at his pre-match press conference. "Every year, it's difficult. Last year was a bit more difficult because we lost Diaby and Wilshere [to injury] and on top of that we lost Fabregas and Nasri. "If you lose four players of that calibre… well, you can imagine. This year, we lost class player but it's one. "I expect there will be a lot of loans [before the deadline], but very few transfers," "Why? Because in Europe there is no money and in England the prices are high so see maybe a lot of movement but a lot of loans."

Ouch. I suppose it's obvious Wenger wasn't a huge fan given how open we were to selling Mr. Song.

Well he bought him and kept him for years. If he wasn't class enough he should have sold him years ago.

Time waster.

Song - I wanted to stay

intriguing

I wanted him to stay as well.

He's so much better than Diaby.