Print this out and lay it down on the table when negotiating the transfer fee!
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It’s just as bad as picking players who did well against us, since Klopp took over we’ve dumped that as well.
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Dortmund are favorites to land Malen for €30m to replace Sancho.
Article also says we were in for him.
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Unfortunately I think it’s more of a commentary on Hertha than Grujic. 
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OUCH!! 
Altho not wrong.
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I found this which gives the Berliner Kurier as the supposed source.
There’s supposedly interest from somewhere in Italy as well …
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Has any unreliable rumour ever resulted in us signing that player. Just checking because I strangely find the page lacking in real rumour substance. ATM.
Thiago, Minamino Allison, Virgil pretty much most of the current squad bar Fab that came out of nowhere and Jota didn’t have much if any talk before happening.
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I’d actually say it’s the other way round. No reliable rumour seems to be signed these days, maybe the odd one. Usually the reliable types know nothing till the day before and there’s no talk about the move except a bit in the home media of wherever the player currently plays and/or comes from.
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Wasn’t Konate just one journalist saying we were going to sign him for like 3 months before we actually announced it?
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That’s not strictly true. Our Konate interest was being reported by Ornstein in back in April. He also called our lack of Summer activity in 2019/20 and got absolute pelters for it at the time but was proven to be bang on the money.
Thiago news was everywhere but it was the usual ones who get fed info who were dampening it down. Tsimikas was linked by sources in Greece and the UK, just not as strongly as Lewis links at the time. Kabak was linked the summer before he arrived. Alisson was strongly rumoured too.
In fact the only real out the blue ones were Fabinho and Jota.
The thing is 90% of the links won’t come to anything but the information could still be valid or come from a place of truth. We’ll have dozens of players on our radar. Our interest in one of them leaking out isn’t always some smokescreen, especially it seems if that interest is first reported by local sources rather than sources local to the club.
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I think it goes like this.
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interest in player gets leaked by sources close to the selling club.
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local journo’s ask the club whether there is truth in this
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the club tell them no
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the local sources report that we have no interest in the player. Everyone goes fucking mental.
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we sign the player.
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local journalists try not to react like they’ve been massively used.
Basically the club use the local journalists however they want. Often that’s to cool a story that we want cooled.
What I’m saying is those we traditionally consider “reliable” aren’t putting rumours out weeks or months before that end up happening any more. If anything them saying something more than a few days before it’s complete actually usually means the opposite is going to happen now like with Thiago and Alisson not coming, Sarr, Werner and Lewis all coming.
For what it’s worth I think the club work seriously on up to 4/5 targets per position, one will be the one leaked to the media, not one of the strongest options but still one we might end up buying as they are a legitimate option whose club may offer us the best option to purchase them. For example we clearly leaked Lewis and kept Tsimikas and others quiet and it turned out Kostas was bid for before any movement happened on Lewis.
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I think you remember the Virgil transfer slightly differently than I do.
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It depends on who you class as reliable. The ones close to the club aren’t going to burn bridges by putting something out there that the club don’t want. Ornstein, who consistently seems to get things right across a lot of clubs has no loyalty to the club and therefore will be keen to run this type of story if his intel is solid. Take Konate for example. Ornstein breaks it and then is far more definitive on the story than Pearce, even though they work at the same publication.
Every man and his dog had us going after Thiago last summer, only ones saying we weren’t interested were those closely associated with the club.
Not sure anyone was that definitive on Sarr ever being a real option, again if I remember correctly those closely affiliated with the club were saying he was too expensive. And Werner absolutely was someone we pursued but we were gazumped by Chelsea.
In an ideal world you’d want no leaks at all. But selling clubs and agents have it in their interest to let the story out sometimes. Not everything is cloak and daggers but it’s not that hard to see through the bullshit for the most part.
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Good on Chelsea, did us a huge favor. 
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‘Protracted’ might be word I’d use 
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Maybe due to the pleasure beach being shut it’s caused us some problems in landing our targets… I’m guessing Klopp with the big one as his background on Zoom doesn’t have the same affect.
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What? No donkeys?
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