Arsenal and James Rodriguez: I’ll believe it when I see it

Arsenal have reportedly had a £63 million offer accepted for Bayern Munich midfielder James Rodriguez. I will only believe the reports, however, when I see it actually happen.

The January transfer window is here. And with it comes the usual vitriol of the transfer rumour mill, a Ferris Wheel of possibility and conjecture, as if writers sit in the office randomly drawing out a club, a player and a price and sticking the three together and comprising an apparent ‘report’.

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I’ll be honest. I hate the transfer window. I hate covering it. I hate following the ridiculous rumours that are connected to it. I hate everything about it. I even have little time for dreaming about what players may or may not be signed. It simply does not excite me, as it seemingly does the rest of the modern football world.

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And with the Arsenal fan base being an oft-frustrated one when it comes to the transfer window and missed signings, newspapers and publications prey on the fans’ desperation for positive news. A striving for anything remotely hopeful means lots of clicks. In the clickbait driven modern media, you don’t need me to tell you where that ends up. We notice it on this site as much as any other.

With all this being said, I now turn to the latest ‘report’ that Arsenal fans should allegedly be paying close attention to because it is definitely true and is going to change the course of the club forevermore. As now reported by The Daily Mirror on Monday, the Gunners have apparently had a £63 million offer for Bayern Munich midfielder James Rodriguez. I know. Me too.

To provide a little context to this report, I did a little digging — as an aside, everything that is written and reported on should be properly accredited and linked to. That includes finding the original source, something that, predictably, The Daily Mirror did not do.

In fairness to The Mirror, they do admit that the initial report comes from Don Balon, a Spanish newspaper famed for its football reporting. If you are to click the hyperlink on their piece, however, it takes you to another, also copy-reported article by TeamTalk, not the most reliable source in the world.

TeamTalk also refers to Don Balon, though only mentioning that it reports that Real Madrid and Liverpool may also be interested in Rodriguez’s services. If you are to do a Google search, though, eventually you will discover that Don Balon are indeed the initial reporters of the Rodriguez-to-Arsenal rumour. The piece, which you can see here (it is in Spanish), was published on November 27th. Not exactly the most recent development.

And to add fuel to the fire, Don Balon are notoriously fragrant with their reporting. A similar British publication would be The Daily Star or The Sun. This is not a BBC Sport or Daily Telegraph report we are talking about here. It is something from the Ferris Wheel.

So, forgive me if I do not believe a word of it until I see it. This is why I hate the transfer window, and I, sadly, among many others more influential and connected than I, am partly to blame.