I know I have largely unrealistic expectations of the national press – accuracy, the reporting of ‘news’ not the invention of fiction or the peddling of gossip as fact, but regular readers of the good ship Vital Villa will have noticed one main topic of conversation in the press of late had gone uncovered by either my good self, that baldy Fear bloke or one of the number of excellent contributors we have here.
The subject of the latest ‘nailed on’ takeover.
It was missing for one grand reason – we couldn’t be bothered and we’re got nothing fresh to say on it that hasn’t been said already – but it’s the end of the month and a quiet day so I’m going to do what everybody else does but interestingly not present it as fact – because there aren’t any.
Not a single one of the reports of late has any fact associated with it, quotes, presentable sources and all the other things you need to actually report something accurately.
Having whipped their column inches into a frenzy over the endless number of nailed on sales in the past – Middle East, Red Bull, Martians, Doris the Tealady – certain websites are at it again and really they should know better.
The latest ‘pluck an American name out of the hat’ were suggestions of Henry Silverman and Todd Boelhy.
They have since been played down as suggestions obviously, that’s how this game works. Suggest somebody in a foiled attempt at an exclusive and then the day after, regurgitate the same cow dung but update it with suggestions they were never seriously interested in the first place.
That seems to be journalism 101 thesedays, or what passes for it anyway.
The biggest laugh there was as their names ‘broke’ in the nationals, they also included lines insisting that non disclosure agreements had been signed with Merrill Lynch.
Coupled with those reports were of course that an ‘advanced sale’ had been agreed with a UK based consortium but it was such an advanced sale that nothing would happen until the summer and a price hadn’t been set.
As they both went round the Chinese whisper wires of the internet, strange contradictions turned up – both groups would only be interested if we remained in the Premier League, both groups would remain interested but for a lower fee if we were relegation to the Championship.
Invent your own and somebody has probably spun it that way.
NBC’s coverage was particularly enlightening.
‘Although Lerner has denied it or simply avoided the question, UK media has steadfastly reported for nearly a year that Lerner put the team up for sale in May of 2014, and has been looking for a buyer since.’
As for the Telegraph today, repeating everything that’s been previously gushed, they lead with Randy’s Bodymoor based property and say that’s been offered as part of the package to this unknown consortium and ‘revealing’ as an exclusive due to their extensive investigations that the consortium are now in due diligence and have been given access to our ‘data room’.
Well shucks.
Shame therefore that the headline announces Randy has put his property up for sale and in no way tallies with the rest of the report – but that happens obviously.
So what to make of it all, well nothing really.
We’re up for sale, the press know the square root of … and all these years on are still regurgitating the same crap we got about Red Bull and all the others – the only difference being new names, pointing out they don’t know names, and the date stamped on the chip paper.
IF and when a deal is done, it will be announced properly, people will make themselves known – we’ve all seen how it really happens in football.
Until then, as always, no point getting excited about names plucked from a hat as for all those press and ITK’s who’ll say they were right all along and stand on their soap boxes screaming exclusives – they’ll remarkably forget about all the times they were wrong over the past five plus years.
And in an exclusive for us, I predict 100% that at some point in the future, the club will be sold and we’ll be purchased by a single individual or a number of them, from the planet Earth.
See I know as much as the press.
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