Fabrizio Romano has revolutionised how transfer news is reported on social media. Photograph: Wikimedia Commons / Nicolasviano21.
The infinite monkey theory suggests that if you sit a monkey down at a typewriter and have it randomly hit the keys an infinite number of times, it will eventually reproduce the entire works of William Shakespeare.
Now, what if you set up an X account for the monkey and have it randomly hit a keyboard an infinite number of times – would it reproduce the entire works of Fabrizio Romano?
Social media has created an inconceivable number of news sources. Every second, new news is posted by accounts of varying reliability to add to the endlessly growing pile of information. In our quest for eternal knowledge, we have feasted upon the endless crumbs scattered amongst the muck.
The summer transfer window has become a battleground for journalists, news aggregators, faceless social media personalities and bots. Drip-feed the masses with what they want to know and be rewarded with likes, followers and “GOAT” status.
Social media, specifically X, has allowed anyone to position themselves as a legitimate journalist or an ‘in-the-know’ (ITK) and disseminate information as breaking or exclusive. Sometimes it might be correct, other times it might be calculated guesswork or perhaps pure nonsense.
It doesn’t matter whether the information is totally correct. The footballing fandom will snaffle up any positive news that can be used to excite or belittle and goad a rival.
This happens alarmingly quickly. There was no chatter about Arsenal’s interest in Vinicius Junior all summer until the Athletic’s David Ornstein revealed it. Then, all of a sudden, hundreds of individuals were across all the details, sharing a new twist or nugget of “truth” to fuel the narrative.
Fans will filter through to the good news, grasping and clinging onto the morsel disseminated by a faceless account, staring gormlessly at the screen and taking it as gospel. Then the page refreshes, a new source pings, ready to be accepted or rejected. Good news is a good source, bad news is a bad source.
There are insiders with legitimate information, who have seemingly genuine sources and can offer credible updates on the inner workings of a transfer deal. The X account Hand of Arsenal has a level of insight to rival any leading journalist – their almost 400,000-strong following is reflective of that.
Transfer gossip has the power to turn journalists into celebrities. Ornstein has amassed 4.5m followers on X through posting only major transfer news, primarily sourced exclusively by him.
Fabrizio Romano has almost 29m followers. The Italian journalist is a force of nature, posting frequent updates and reminders before capping a completed transfer off with a “Here We Go!”.
Since joining Twitter/X in July 2011, Romano has posted more than 75,000 times – an average of 5,000 a year, or 14 a day, for 15 years – with the majority likely coming in the last half decade.
With that comes huge scrutiny. Each update is met with immense engagement and his work is pitted against other insiders and journalists, with fans from across the world declaring their allegiance to Romano or Ornstein or a random ITK.
It isn’t always this trivial. There was needle between Romano and Sky Germany’s Florian Plettenberg over the transfer of Yan Diomande to Real Madrid. The former was the first to claim it had been completed, the latter disputed this and said that the clubs remained at odds over an agreed fee.
Of course, this online spat had no eventual impact on the actual transfer. The Ivorian winger completed his move to Madrid and the exact timing of his arrival in the Spanish capital does not truly matter in the grand scheme of the sport.
The same is to be said of Bruno Guimarães’ move to Arsenal. Murmurs of the Gunners’ interest in the Brazilian emerged and news of a first, second and third bid circulated online. The interest was confirmed by some journalists and refuted by Newcastle United journalists.
For weeks, Sky Sports’ Keith Downie and the Daily Telegraph’s Luke Edwards reported that the Magpies had never been contacted by Arsenal for the signing of their captain. The pair insisted that no bids had been made and their sources in the club maintained their position that Guimarães was not for sale.
The two journalists suffered an unfair pile-on by Arsenal fans, adamant that they knew nothing and that the midfielder had already agreed to sign for the Premier League champions. There were two sides to the same story, neither the whole truth.
Eventually a deal for Guimarães was struck and he signed for Arsenal, whose fans rejoiced at securing their new man and mocked reporters who purported otherwise. But what does it all matter?
The likes of Downie and Edwards were not necessarily inaccurate in their reporting. Nor were the other journalists who said otherwise. We have reached a point in journalism in which tribalism and partisanship run amok on social media.
It is no longer enough for fans to let a transfer window run its course, for clubs to hammer out important details of a signing over a matter of weeks. Every day requires fresh insight and the beggars demand our titbit of news, our dopamine hit, our “bomba”.
With no actual football to create competition, we have been forced to manufacture competition. Who is the best journalist? Who is the best ITK? Which club has the best net spend? Which signings possess the most aura?
Liverpool were crowned undisputed winners of the transfer window last summer after immense outlays on Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak. By the end of the season, they finished fourth, lost their star player for nothing and sacked their manager.
There will always be reliable, informative journalists who do good work. There will be the accounts that are genuinely ‘in the know’. Yet, as we continue to deepen our addiction to the immediate, the different and the dopamine, the words of the monkey at the typewriter ring true.
From the amortisation of contracts to image rights and the overperformance of a player’s expected goals, even the monkey can eventually be the expert on a host of different issues. And whether it is the works of Shakespeare or gibberish, we will keep lapping up its words.
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Jack McRae writes... 