Charlie Taylor has been nothing short of a great servant to the club since breaking through into the first team set-up, replacing Stephen Warnock when he moved to Derby County part way through the 2014/15 season.
That attitude hasn’t changed this season, the young left-back giving his all, this despite the early part of the season being under the darkening cloud of what some were seeing as a ‘want-a-way attitude’. After the final friendly fixture of pre-season, a 2-1 win over Serie A side Atalanta, Taylor handed in a transfer request – a request summarily rejected by the club.
Leeds’ sole owner at the time, Massimo Cellino, said that Taylor was going nowhere, and true to his word the 23-year-old is still on the books at Elland Road despite ‘Premier League interest’. With all of this going on, Leeds United head coach Garry Monk said that as long as he was available, Taylor would be picked and that has been the case – Taylor making 22 appearances this season, setting up three Leeds United goals.
Currently, the York-born left-back is out with an Achilles injury, a return to training feted for today as Taylor takes the first tentative steps back onto the comeback trail. However, his continued injury absence hasn’t stopped a number of Leeds United fans to begin positing that there’s some darker motive to him being out other than a simple ‘injury’.
That kind of ‘deeper thinking’ is endemic across social media – there’s always something being read into something else and conclusions then being jumped to. There’s a lot of positives that can be attached to football clubs and social media platforms, fan engagement being the biggest – that way that fans are brought closer to the players/club that they love.
But, amongst the negative aspects are the way that some fans use it.
@charlietaylor09 hope this isn't true… 😠⚽️shocking news if so. @GarryMonk @pepclotet @andrearadri #lufc#mot#notbiggerthantheclub pic.twitter.com/eLH5SFLVA3
— Adam Barratt (@AdamBarratt19) February 20, 2017
Now, I’m in no way pointing fingers at anyone, and definitely not at Adam for posting this tweet with a screen grab of a conversation on Instagram that has been doing the rounds. It is the response of ‘CharlieTaylor93’, a ‘verified’ Instagram account, that was the cause behind Adam’s concern. And rightly so too, if this were a response coming from a professional footballer.
Now, since that exchange first surfaced on Twitter, since it was first copied over and posted into Facebook, it is safe to say that it was met with much scepticism from Leeds United fans. The massive majority of Leeds United fans have not put an ounce of belief in the exchange, dismissing it out-of-hand.
So has Leeds United co-owner Andrea Radrizzani, judging by his response to the tweet in which he was @tagged in:
you are smart to see it s not Charlie account. Let s keep energy for Saturday game!
— Andrea Radrizzani (@andrearadri) February 20, 2017
‘Grez Sez’ – a verdict of sorts
Adam is right to ask the question that he did. If were true then it would be something way and above PieGate and Sutton United’s former reserve keeper Wayne Shaw. ‘If’, ‘if’ – it’s a case of ‘if’! Because when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of this case, and the reply from the CharlieTaylor93 Instagram account, that’s all it really boils down to – a matter of ‘if’.
As the adage goes: ‘if ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers’ hands,’ and there’s likely been tinkering hands involved in the abovementioned Instagram account that is causing all the brew-ha-ha. Charlie Taylor is a consummate professional and a much-admired professional; the work of that Instagram account is of an amateur with too much time on their hands. It is obvious that the two don’t quite marry up.
It’s the same every transfer window, there’s always one, two, many Twitter accounts that pop up with enough ‘fake news’ to send POTUS Donald Trump into a tailspin. You don’t need the local farmer to be out spreading his fields, nor there to be a strong headwind to be able to catch a whiff of what this smells of.
