as silly season winds down, i thought it would be good to remind everyone of a few simple lessons regarding ITKs, especially those on twitter. i wanted to write this because i was, quite a few years ago, an ITK for another major sport here in the USA. not a major ITK, but i had a connection to a pro athlete who played for a pro sports team. he actually found my old website and connected with me offline because he was curious about some of the concepts i was discussing. we chatted via email a few times, and eventually we exchanged info and he would text/call me to discuss what he was doing and what his team was doing. he was a few years younger than me, but we were close to the same age, and i treated him more like a friend than i did some kind of source of inside information. i rarely ever asked him for info, he sometimes volunteered info to me. additionally, i had connections to a pro scout for the team i was writing about at the time. this scout and i exchanged emails a few times, and we had 2 conversations on the phone where he did give me information. in both relationships, i received bits of information on 4 or 5 separate occasions. the info i received turned out to be right in all but 1 case. in the one case where it did not turn out to be true, it was explained to me why it didn't work out. with that said, based on my experiences, this is what i was told:
the people who make the decisions at a club have the final say, and sometimes they change their mind for any number of reasons, and they can change their mind at the last minute. a deal can be worked on for weeks or months at a time, it can be 99% complete, and at the last minute, a key decision maker can change his mind in an instant. it might be for financial reasons, for reasons that no one else knows (like an off the field issue was uncovered at the last minute) or for medical reasons. all of the info that had previously filtered down from the top brass to the people under them may have pointed in one direction, but a last minute change could have altered things and when it happened, it may not have trickled down to the various lower levels before the media was informed. that is why an ITK may only know something broke down after the fact.
pro sports teams have working relationships with journalists and often times use journalists to further their agenda. if a team is considering doing something but they are not sure what the reaction will be to it, they will use the journalist as a trial balloon, feed them info (without having the journo explain where the info came from directly) and then see what the reaction is. this happens all the time in politics too. most people assume that arsenal use david ornstein at the bbc for this very reason. everything he writes looks like it comes directly from the club. if he says we're interested or not interested, hes likely getting it from the club. the club may give him misinformation when they dont want everyone to know their actual target. for instance, they could tell him we're interested in mustafi so he writes about it and other clubs think we are interested, when in reality, we're working on a completely different target. we may want that target's club to think we're fine to go ahead with the other deal to get them to lower their price. this happens constantly in all sports. if the world knows we need a CB, everyone we approach to buy a CB will try to squeeze us, which is of course what is happening now. by leaking info about target A or B, we can make one club think we'll go in another direction if they dont lower their price. club execs speak to each other and talk, but just like us, they rely on the media to try and understand what is going on, especially when they maybe do not have reliable contacts at a club. it is almost never in a club's best interest to be completely honest with other clubs about their intentions.
just like journalists have relationships with clubs, journalists also have relationships with bloggers, smaller sites, and fans. when i was actively writing, i knew a prominent national writer and conversed with him via email. on one occasion he gave me 2 nuggets of information about stuff that was going to happen, but he couldnt write about it because he couldnt cite his source and if he did write about it, the two teams making the deal would know he was the leak, because only a small handful of people knew about the deal. sometimes a journalist will give a piece of info to a friend that they cant publish and attribute to anyone, and that gets passed along and passed along, and then it winds up online.
very very few professional sports teams can operate in total secrecy. a team can only control the flow of information on their side. for example, if arsenal is dealing with valencia for mustafi, then you have the power brokers at arsenal (wenger, dickie law, gazidis, our lawyers, etc) who know, and you also have the decision makers at valencia who know what is being discussed. you can tell your people to not talk about it or discuss it, but you cant control what valencia's director of football says or does. he may be trustworthy or he may tell everyone he knows. that info might get out and start spreading. of course, he also has no incentive to really tell the truth to the press or anyone outside of arsenal.
which brings me to my summary. this afcamden guy might or might not be plugged in to the club. i suspected years ago that wilshere was his source of information. now, wilshere is not in the offices with wenger while he's on the phone with valencia talking about mustafi, but the players are interacting with the staff every day, and just like us, they are curious about transfers, who is coming and who is going. so, wilshere talks to the kit man, the kit man talks to a midlevel executive, and the midlevel executive is talking to dick law. the exec finds out we're legitimately interested in mustafi, he tells vic akers, akers tells wilshere, and wilshere tells his buddy dean, who then tweets about it. hes never going to tell the world wilshere is his source, because if he does, then wilshere is going to get in trouble internally because he blabbed the club's business to an outsider.
lots of people on twitter have no connections and are totally full of shit. but its naive to think all of them are full of shit. people at the club talk to each other. they all have friends/family outside the club. people know people, information circulates, and people find out. as i explained above, sometimes it will be misinformation, sometimes it will actually be accurate. afcamden, for instance, normally has team news and injury stuff well before the media does. which leads you to believe he does have a legit source inside the club. now, whether that legit source gives him all the info or some info, who knows. maybe that source purposefully misleads him in some cases because the club wants to leak out info to see what the reaction is? he has 58,000 twitter followers, which is crazy, given that no one knows who is he and he appears to just be a regular fan.
in the know, by definition, means you know something. you dont always know everything. from my understanding of the process, especially as it relates to US sports, pro teams are constantly discussing hundreds of different scenarios and possibilities. most of them never pan out, but that is the nature of the sporting world. that doesnt mean that this ITK is worthless or knows nothing or that ITK is a genius. its just one more piece of information to consider. ultimately, no one knows everything, and most people, us included, know nothing. but getting pulled along for the ride is part of the fun.
/the end.
