Petr Cech to Arsenal rumor gathers pace thanks to Large Pan-European Transfer Rumor Collider

The Large Hadron Collider may take all the headlines when it comes to incredible feats in the field of particle physics, but the Large Pan-European Transfer Rumor Collider can create some incredible pieces of matter as well.  The LPETRC may not ever help us glimpse the God Particle, but, boy, is it ever efficient at creating something out of nothing!

Take, for example, Petr Cech's rumored transfer to Arsenal this coming summer.  The facts are fairly clear.  Cech's contract runs for one more year, but he's not too keen on continuing to play second-fiddle to Thibaut Courtois, so after 11 years at Chelsea, he's looking to be successful (while playing at the top level of the game) somewhere else.  Chelsea are willing to let him go — he's certainly earned the right to that much! — but Arsenal are most definitely nowhere near the top of our list of preferred destinations.  In fact, they're probably right at the bottom.

That alone won't stop the rumor mill of course, and a supposed interest from Arsenal, alongside a £10m bid, has been a recurring throwaway rumor in the English media for some time now.  Sources back in the Czech Republic have picked up on one of these, and included it in a story earlier this week.  The one source we're most interested in is Radio Praha.  Here's their story from yesterday.

The English Premier League club Arsenal is reportedly moving closer to a deal to sign Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Čech, the daily idnes.cz reported on Thursday. According to the website, Čech's manager Viktor Kolář was recently in London to discuss the player's future. According to the British media, Arsenal manager Arséne Wenger is currently willing to make a bid of up to 10 million pounds (around 382 million crowns) for Čech.

That's pretty clear, though the Radio Praha blurb is actually just a summary of the original iDNES story.  Here's the relevant bit from that:

Přesto Kolář v minulých dnech údajně navštívil Londýn, kde měl jednat o Čechově budoucnosti, a vše ukazuje na blížící se dohodu s Arsenalem.

I anglická média referují o vytrvalém zájmu klubu, který byl angažování Čecha blízko už v zimě.

Which translates to what Radio Praha just told you.

So Kolář's goes to London (which just so happens to be where his client currently plays and lives), and talks to some people.  It's entirely unclear to whom or to which teams he spoke, by the way.  The Czechs write about that, while also mentioning that the English media have been hot-n-heavy with the whole Cech-to-Arsenal angle.  Twenty-four hours later, the rumor comes full circle, when the English media (for example: Telegraph) cite the Czech media who cite the English media.

The LPETRC truly is a magnificent device.