Where do they come from? Are they made up? It's a question every journalist is asked. Everyone loves transfer gossip. Players like to be linked with other clubs, fans like to read about their next signing, clubs like to let it be known who they are interested in (especially around the time the new season tickets are going on sale, which is a particular trick of at least one Premiership club...) And yet breaking stories is the hardest job in newspapers.
Good writing, expert analysis and opinions and outstanding match reporting should all make up part of the package but breaking stories...that's what readers demand. Especially in the tabloids and because of the competition for circulation, it is the most in-demand skill. If your newspaper can be consistently first with the breaking news, then the theory is that it will attract readers from rival publications. "If you don't shoot, you don't score," is always the excuse when the story proves wrong. And there are plenty of those. Stories can be wrong, but in my experiences on four different national newspapers, a story is NEVER made up. There are, of course, different truths.
One might be a story placed by an agent looking for an improved contract with his existing club. Another story might be from a manager looking to tell the player his days are numbered by leaking the 'news'. Another might be from a boss looking to unsettle a rival player, or to get himself a better job. It happens. Regularly. My job now, as a sports editor, is to judge the strength of a story. It is a question of judgement and more times you get it wrong, the more chance you have of looking for a new job! So how do reporters get these stories? In order to achieve the best 'scoops' (I am reliably informed), a journalist needs contacts.
When I was still a teenager and working for The Sun, the newspaper invested time and money in sending me to Norway with West Ham. Because I was one of only two journalists on the ten-day, pre-season trip, I spent good time with the players and management, building up relationships, earning their trust. For a West Ham fan, who had been standing on the terraces only months before, I was like a kid let loose with his dad's credit card in Hamleys. It was a fantastic learning experience. Lou Macari, the new manager, used my room to try and sign Ray Wilkins and Rod Wallace from Rangers.
My room! He asked me not to use the story, or at least to delay it for a week, and I, of course, complied with his request. Lou also told me and my colleague, Ian Gibb, he was buying Colin Foster and, again, asked us not to run the story. When the deal become public news days later, I questioned Macari who said West Ham might have lost the player to a rival club if the story had come out too soon. So there is some give-and-take, some risks to take, decisions to be made. Journalists don't always get it right. And even when we get it right, we can get it wrong too. I was once banned from Crystal Palace for reporting that Ian Wright was going to Arsenal. He was soon off to Highbury and didn't make many more appearances at Selhurst Park...but neither did I! On another occasion, I knew about John Hartson's transfer from West Ham to Wimbledon for £7million, but had again been asked not to write it. However, some stories are too big to ignore and I chose to run the story in my newspaper, discovering the next morning that at least two other publication had the story on their back pages too. Phew! That was a let-off and my 'contact' understood why I HAD to run that one.
How many times do you get to learn about a £7million transfer? John Lyall wasn't quite so understanding when I was asked by an agent to 'plant' a story about his client, who then played for West Ham. The next time I saw John, he looked me in the eye and shook hands so hard, my ring cut into the skin! My office at The Sun, meanwhile, weren't best pleased when on that trip to Norway, I took to getting to know the players a bit too well. I had enjoyed a game of midnight crazy golf with Julian Dicks (it doesn't get much crazier than that!) and had seen one player who had been sent to bed, climb back into the hotel bar through the window to ask the two journalists to get the drinks in (none of which was reported, of course), eaten reindeer and tried - and failed - to take on Phil Parkes, Tony Gale and Alvin Martin in drinking red wine (on a night off for the players)... But when the players went fishing for the day, long before reporters were given mobile phones to take around the world, I went with them.
It happened to be the day that Paul Ince was pictured in a rival newspaper wearing a Manchester United kit and all hell broke loose! So the office were trying to contact their 'man on the spot', who was out sea fishing with the players and catching nothing other than a sore ear when my sports editor finally got hold of me. Like I say, it's about judgement! Who are your contacts? Well, a journalist never gives up his source. So, as the transfer window opens and the stories flow, with West Ham and their best players no doubt close to the speculation, remember this. Journalists don't always get it right...but it's not for the want of trying. Merry Christmas.