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Transfer Rumours | How Legit Are They?

Silly season is well and truly underway, and newspapers, websites, and the good ol' Twitter ITK accounts across the country are filling us with annoying "Ronaldo will sign again for United", and the predictable "Cavani to Chelsea" rumours, but I've always wondered how legit are these transfer rumours? Then I stumbled across a lovely little site that gives the accuracy on rumours created, as well as how many times they have created rumours. Bear in mind that these are counted towards how many have been correct from their 'predictions'. These percentages go back from 2006, and are only based on if the player has transferred to the rumoured club, or signed a new contract.

My personal view on newspapers is that if it's from the Telegraph, Guardian, The Independent or The Times, then it may contain a little truth.

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Even though on percentage the Telegraph only just beats the Daily Mail and The Sun, both have rumoured up a huge number, in which a small amount have been truthful. The Guardian is top of that list, which isn't a huge surprise given the audience The Guardian has. What did surprise me is that all 3 of the newspapers that have bad reputation on rumours, are only bottom on the first page. The second page shows the newspapers who don't have a Kalou. (sorry)

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The newspaper sitting bottom of the rumour heaped pile is the Metro, which is beyond surprising seeing as it is a free newspaper. Now if you saw how much The Sun and Daily Mail had lied through their teeth, then get a good look at the Daily Mirror. An absolute whopping 8386 rumours created with a very small 1793 correct. It's safe to say the Daily Mirror isn't the most believable football newspaper on the market.

Now onto the rumours created per day by British newspapers.

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News Of The World, which crumbled in 2011 due to outrageous phone hacking, still tops the list, conjuring up 3.94 rumours a day in it's time. That's a lot of rumours for a newspaper that doesn't exist anymore. The least surprising is that all of the unpopular newspapers also up near the top there, as they smash rumours out to get clicks, and people buying their newspaper. After all, who doesn't love the good old "Vidal to United" rumour, which has tainted this summer transfer window. (as United usually always does)

Now what about websites? Sky Sports is top dog for rumours, and TalkSport goes up there as a trusted source. Surprisingly, these are not at the top. Even more surprisingly is who is actually at the top.

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Now if you had asked me if I thought Goal was legit, I would have laughed in your face. Least surprising is the website at the bottom. If you have ever read an article from Caught Offside, you would realise how much is based off of fantasy. TalkSport leads the way in number of rumours created, although the bad percentage, they have been getting better recently. Now onto the time per day a website pumps out the "Vidal to United" rumour.

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TalkSport tops the list, with Sky Sports and Goal down at the bottom. Not much really to say on these, as they are, as predicted, pretty low. Now over to European newspapers.

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The Gazzetta leads the way in transfer rumours, and unsurprisingly, a very small amount of all of these newspapers are correct, but Gazzetta seems to create less noise than most, giving them a huge percentage. The rumours created by each of these newspapers range from 0.1 - 0.4, so surely these must be correct. Right?! Now for a bit of fun, lets see who has been racking up the rumour mill in the past 2 weeks. (Take a guess)

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No real surprises here, Di Maria's on off transfer to PSG and every other club with money is at the top, with the British transfer saga of the summer Vidal being second with 6. Now heres the most rumoured clubs of the last 2 weeks.

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Real Madrid lead the way as they seek to sell most of their attacking talent so they can use their shiny new ones. The 3 English clubs who underachieved last season racking up rumours as expected. Now finally, if you're wondering who is most reliable for Chelsea rumours, here is how accurate websites and newspapers are across the globe when it comes to Chelsea rumours.

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Look at The Scotsman with 100%. Albeit they have only guessed 1 transfer rumour correct, but go them! Second in command is the ever reliable 'Sky Sources', followed by The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. So if The Scotsman says Pogba, Varane or my personal favourite Reus is off to Chelsea, we better all start dreaming.

But what about the least reliable source when it comes to Chelsea?

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As you can see there, most of the European newspapers, with the exception of Marca and Bild are down the bottom with 0% correct. They can be let off, as they do tend to only report rumours that are happening in that country (or in Tuttosport's case, Juventus), and as Chelsea rarely shop in Italy, Juventus or France (could soon, hopefully change), then it isn't surprising that they sit bottom of the pile. Goal sits just above them with 1 out of 14 rumours guessed correctly, but the most surprising one for me is TalkSport, having rumoured up 109 transfers, only 11 of them have ever went through, giving them a 10.1% accuracy percentage.

All this information is eye opening, and if Sky Sports ever reports Pogba is close to signing for Chelsea, then it may be time to start dreaming. However, it's not a good idea to dream if Goal claims Chelsea are close to signing Reus. Either way, transfer rumours should always be taken with a pinch of salt, and only ever start fully dreaming if Pogba, Cavani, Reus, Varane or whoever your dream player may be, is stood outside Cobham, holding up a Chelsea shirt.

All information taken from here.

This FanPost was contributed by a member of the community and was not subject to any sort of approval process. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions held by the editors of this site.

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