If it hadn’t cost him so much money, Antonio Conte could have been forgiven for tearing out his hair. During a typically earnest round-table transfer discussion, Sky Sports presenter Jo Wilson asked her colleague, Michael Bridge, for his thoughts on Tottenham Hotspur’s not entirely unexpected failure to sign Luis Díaz.
On the back of footage filmed some weeks ago of an extremely morose, middle-aged Conte telling reporters: “For sure we need to improve the quality of our squad,” Bridge explained, with the gravitas one might expect from a father explaining to his small child that a beloved hamster has died, why the Italian won’t be improving it by securing the services of the Porto winger.
“Just on this player in particular, Spurs were prepared to match the fee and match everything which Liverpool are going to pay,” Bridge solemnly intoned. “I need to say this because I know that’s the case. On this occasion, I know the player just wants to go to Liverpool.” Going on to explain that this was no ordinary gazumping, that Liverpool’s interest in the player had been long term and they had not decided to out-bid Tottenham just to torment Conte for the hell of it, Bridge handed down his verdict. “Disappointment,” he said. “But Spurs will move on.”
No strangers to transfer window disappointment, Spurs have little choice but to move on, and all associated with the club will hope to speed up the healing process by trying to “move on” several players who were once the subject of high-profile bids the club did successfully manage to get over the proverbial transfer line. Often unable to do right for doing wrong in the market, even when Spurs appear to have gotten one over on Premier League rivals their victories end up feeling pyrrhic.
A penny for the thoughts of their chairman Daniel Levy if he ever surveys news stories from last July reporting that Manchester City were prepared to offer Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus, Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva in exchange for Harry Kane. In the six months since publication, three of the four City players rumoured to be part of the job lot the club was prepared to sacrifice have scored more top-flight goals than the striker Tottenham fought so hard to keep in the summer.
Of course it behoves us to note there is no guarantee that the reported details of this potential summer mega-swap deal were even remotely true, and even if their bona fides stood up to scrutiny, the byzantine contract negotiations required for a deal involving so many box-office footballers, their representatives and a club chairman renowned for playing hardball would almost certainly have ended in tears.
The torrents of bullshit which permeate and pollute each transfer window are now at such levels they rival the amount of effluent British water companies were recently discovered to dump into our coastal seas. As somebody who is regularly tasked with writing the early morning Rumour Mill for this newspaper’s website, it would be a gross dereliction of journalistic duty if I did not claim responsibility for at least a few metaphorical gallons’ worth.
“Write what you know” has long been a sage bit of wisdom passed on to aspiring authors, but the mushroom clouds of rumours, counter-rumours, fan dissatisfaction and frenzied media speculation which plume over our biannual transfer windows increasingly seem to be generated by armies of journalists, broadcasters and In The Know fans often writing or talking about what they not only don’t know, but can’t possibly know. And all for the benefit of audiences who treat each new dollop of tittle-tattle and tell-all with healthy scepticism despite really wanting to believe it is true.
While the peddling of idle transfer speculation is part of my job spec, it is one I remain ambivalent towards, having no real interest in which footballer might sign for what club until we’ve had the “Here we go!” from transfer guru Fabrizio Romano, the ink has dried on their contract and we’ve seen the photo of them beaming alongside their new manager while posing with the club shirt.
While the endless hours of speculation with which Sky Sports News and various other media outlets fill their schedules in each window suggest demand for this harmless nonsense is high, I can’t be alone in having wished that, say, a fairly recent Deadline Day had been devoted to discussions about the 41 goals scored in the preceding weekend’s 10 Premier League matches, 16 of which came in Tottenham’s 6-1 smiting of Manchester United at Old Trafford on the same day Aston Villa famously beat Liverpool 7-2. Instead, viewers were treated to what seemed like half-hourly updates from Everton’s Finch Farm training centre regarding confirmed sightings of Ben Godfrey from a nervous reporter mindful of the fact that a colleague once had a large purple sex toy thrust in his ear by an over-enthusiastic fan while reporting from that very spot.
When I am the king, there will be a blanket media ban on reports of all transfer speculation and dealings, with clubs forbidden from announcing Mbappé or anyone else until such time as the players in question run out to line up for their first game at their new team.
If nothing else, it would be worth it to see the disappointment on the faces of Spurs fans when instead of Díaz, Adama Traoré and half of Manchester City’s first team, they are instead treated to the spectacle of the usual suspects being bawled out by a manager who could scarcely look more forlorn.
