It’s the January transfer window, plenty of business to be done as teams jockey into position for that final push. It’s the last chance saloon, there are no other transfer or loan windows until summer.
The fact that there isn’t another transfer window until the summer makes it even more important that teams get it right and get it right now. Fail to do so and it could mean season over, it’s that important.
As you’d expect, there are transfers going around about all players and all clubs, it’s simply the nature of the beast at times like this. Names get linked, through various channels, and clubs get mentioned – it’s simply unavoidable.
Some are realistic and happen, both clubs agreeing a deal that sees one player leave and money change hands. Some are fanciful and, initially, are scoffed at before being derided as the window shuts and no deal has been done. Others, well other transfer rumours are simply there to fill column inches. They are either born of an overactive mind or, probably more true, an overactive imagination.
Take the Robbie Keane issue. Keane can rightly be called a modern-day football legend. This is a player with 146 Ireland caps and 68 goals. This is a player who has commanded £88 million in transfer fees. This is a player with 636 total appearances that have garnered 287 goals. This is a player still considered good enough at 36 to play in last summer’s Euros for Ireland.
Of course his name carries a certain amount of cachet and footballing gravitas. It is something that is traded on, it becomes almost like some kind of commodity. That is what it has become. He has been linked with a ‘shock’ return to English football with Preston North End, the Lilywhites being installed as 1/2 on favourites to sign him according to betting site Sky Bet.
Trouble is, his name and notoriety has not stopped the media trading on it as if it is a commodity, nor the names of clubs ‘linked’ with him. Take Leeds United, one of his former clubs, as an example of a club ‘linked’ with Keane. It was all over social media that there was supposed interest, and that’s the key word is ‘supposed’. There was nothing beyond supposition moving towards concrete, there were no strong sources.
It didn’t stop the media writing about it then, it hasn’t stopped them now a week later. Today the same story of a Keane-Leeds United link has been made by the Daily Star. Starting with the assertion that Sunderland are to “open talks for the Irishman next week,” the article goes on to say that there is competition from others such as Brighton and Preston, “and Garry Monk’s Leeds.”
The Daily Star say that Keane ‘could’ “be set for a return” to Elland Road where he played 33 games, scored nine goals and was then sold to help balance the books in 2002. It’s kind of painful to read the rest of the story, a story that contradicts itself in the most painfully clear of ways.
First the Daily Star say that “he failed to rule out a move back to his old stomping ground,” with Keane admitting that he has a number of offers and avenues that he is exploring. Then it closes with the final line of, “I definitely haven’t heard from Leeds or Wolves.”
Now I’m no genius, but surely not hearing means that there is no interest. I could be wrong but it seems pretty blatant a contradiction that.
Is it a contradiction though? Or is it just another fanciful invention of an overactive mind and imagination; a case of putting 2-and-2 together, chipping off the corners and coming up with something that looks like 4, just?
I’d more than likely go for the latter to be fair.
[interaction id=”58847df56904cee705a694d8″]
