Yes. But all that shows at this stage is that Leventhal has read the same articles as everyone else. He hasn’t ‘broken’ one transfer rumour this summer and has been caught on the hop with others. I agree with you about the Greek guy being a great signing. But I really really doubt it’ll happen for a few reasons.
I think Leventhal verifies reports he’s heard with the club and with the player’s representatives etc. So it does add to the reliability of the interest in my opinion. But agreed. I wonder if he has some kind of arrangement with the club whereby he doesn’t dig for new stories but they’ll comment on stories he’s come across from other sources.
Nope, I think it is pretty clear from reading his transfer articles that he just gets his stories from Twitter or places like this that amalgamate stories. He wasn't the first to report any of the Udinese incomings and he also had absolutely no idea about the James Garner one too.
I don’t think anything you said disagrees with or undermines what I said. He never breaks transfer stories. He might hear stories from his own research or other journalists/publications/Twitter. But when he hears a rumour, he is often able to see if there is anything to it or if it’s just BS. We were linked with Obita and Iorfa last week and he was able to confirm fairly quickly that there is some vague interest in Iorfa and that Obita is just paper talk. He clearly has contacts at the club who answer certain questions he has but might not feed him stories directly.
I expect news, one way or the other to emerge in the next 48 hours. If this isn't confirmed soon, I can confirm it is not happening.
I don't know what you mean by him 'confirming it'? How is it different to me posting on here, pretending to have inside contacts, and saying 'I too have heard we are interested in Iorfa and Obita. Same goes for Manning. Oh, and Giannoulis too. *Scrolls through Twitter* Oh and Barecca. All these are options currently being assessed' Lets say for argument sake I'm right, and he has no idea. He will obviously say we have an interest in them as one of two things will happen: The interest is genuine and he can then say he knew about it. The rumour fades away and he claims it was only vague interest as he said.
I do think people need to distinguish between things he is reporting on and things he is giving his opinion on, which seem to end up being conflated on here. As an example he recently said he "thinks" that the club will bring in a left back - that is not him claiming to have a source telling him that, it is just his opinion. On the other hand, he has pretty consistently maintained Troost Ekong was our main target at centre back. That has come from a source.
I think his deep dives into several of our signings (Ngakia, Garner, Troost-Ekong certainly) were up very shortly after the club confirmed the signings. In those, he interviews the players’ former coaches and teammates etc. Can’t be done in an hour or so. So suggests that he has a heads up. Look, it’s possible he talks BS. Lots of people do, especially ITK types on Twitter. As you point out, with transfer rumours it’s very difficult to verify whether the person was talking BS (with the example of the interest ‘never being followed up on’ or whatever) or just that they’re reporting on an evolving situation. That works the other way too: a journalist or ITK can tweet “Fee agreed for Player X. Coming to the training ground tomorrow for a medical” and then the deal falls apart behind the scenes for whatever reason and the report is dismissed as fake news. It’s tough. You’re of course welcome to your own judgments about Leventhal. I think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that he has no greater access in discovering who are transfer targets are, but does enjoy access in confirming whether a reported target is actually being targeted and if so, what stage of the deal we’re at. He has also said things in the past along the lines of “that’s not a name I’ve heard” so I don’t think he just regurgitates every name he sees on twitter without doing some follow up research. I’d also add that if you look at the Athletic’s stable of journalists more generally, they’re some of the most informed journalists re their clubs in the game (Phil Hay for Leeds, David Ornstein, Andy Naylor for Brighton). Don’t think they’d have brought him on board if he was a blowhard.
I think on Tuesday night he said “LB is top of list” in terms of the club’s plans for the next week. That doesn’t seem like opinion. Sounds like something he’s been told. It’s not like he’s said “obviously with Masina our, the club could do with another LB.”
No he wasn't: https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamLeventhal/status/1297602362463457285 This would suggest he didn't have the info that the Italian journalists had when the story started breaking, who said that Troost Ekong would be joining Watford. Furthermore, this was posted in the Troost Ekong thread: Granted he was back at Udinese, but obviously we know now he wasn't part of their plans. Clearly there was a hold up in the Bonifazi deal and Udinese were holding on to him until they got that one over the line. It was then posted in this thread by Burnsy that he had heard the deal was happening (I think he got this info from Louorns). 5 year deal. This was on Sept 17th. Meanwhile at the same time, on one of his Q&As, AL was saying we were looking at bringing in a left footed CB when he was asked about CB reinforcements. No mention of Troost-Ekong. The very first post on the Troost-Ekong thread says that Watford would be signing him once Udinese signed Bonifazi. This turned out to be 100% correct, Bonifazi joined on 25th September which allowed WTE to leave for Watford. That is an example of someone using their inside sources, not someone putting some vague comments in Q&As..
The Q&A from that time (September 18, with AL's answer on September 20) that I think you're referring to, did ask a question about Troost-Ekong and this was the response: "Ekong talks have been going on since the start of the window, and judging by what VI said post match he’s hopeful of him coming. Have to wait to see if others come in for Sarr now LFC and MUFC have dropped out for the time being while Suarez is of interest to Marseille but have to wait to see what happens on that." He did mention then that we were/are also looking for a left-footer and that WTE may be a Dawson replacement. The previous Q&A was on September 14th and didn't discuss any CB incomings.
Fair enough, I was simply going by a screenshot on the WTE thread without further context. The rest of my post still stands though. It was Louorns who 'reignited' the rumour as opposed to AL. He said he was part of Udinese's plans and said it was possibly a case of just 1 of Sierrala/Troost Ekong so he wasn't exactly consistent.
I don't disagree. @LouOrns definitely 'reignited' the rumour, as you say. Although it is worth noting that the timescale he reported was a little off. Louorns also has (wrongly in my opinion) received a lot of criticism from many on here for sharing things he's hard that then don't (at least immediately) turn out to be true. As I've said throughout, I don't think Leventhal does much in terms of revealing new information/targets, but I do think he works hard to verify rumours as they emerge and so therefore (to tie back to my original point) the fact that he has mentioned Giannoulis previously as a target means that there is likely to be (or have been) some interest from us. It's not some baseless report from abroad (as we have seen in the past, particularly, it seems, from Turkish media) and/or an agent listing clubs to try and drum up interest.
But circumstances change and his reporting may well have been on the money at the time - in this case I think Udinese would have wanted him as back up, but that didn't appeal to him. My point was that he has consistently said that we are interested in / in talks with WTE. WTE himself has said talks have been ongoing for weeks so that would appear to be the truth. And yes Italian papers broke the news regarding WTE and not AL, but those kind of sources have also broken lots of total rubbish. AL seems to reach out to players' agents and maybe a source at the club and at least does a reasonable job at helping us know which of these links have truth in them and which are rubbish. Look - if we had loads of other reporters covering us and breaking stories, maybe there wouldn't be much use for him, but as is he by a very long way the most reliable reporter for us. Louorns has got far more wrong than AL, but people seem to hang on his every breath.
No they don't - the difference is Louorns actually breaks news. Some of it is true (Troost-Ekong, Murray, etc) some of it isn't (Dawson, Forestieri). He at least puts his head above the parapet. Leventhal does nothing but repeat what is widely available elsewhere. That's all I'm saying. For me, him 'confirming our interest in someone' is useless.
He has strong ties with Vlad, so maybe that connection might be what swings it for him to come to us.
Maybe this guy will be sold to Udinese, released and then we can sign him as a free agent outside the window. Wouldn't put it past the Pozzos.
I've not read this thread through, but is it being suggested that this guy will still sign for us somehow?
https://twitter.com/lianoskostas/status/1349859728462147585?s=21 Seems to be heading to Norwich for close to £7m. Those around us are making moves to bolster themselves when they are already in positions of strength. I fear this is the window where we get left behind and truly won’t be able to recover quickly.
This would obviously be a top signing for Norwich and I think the most expensive made by a championship side this season (Toney is the only one that is close, and reports range from 5 to 10m). Preston and Stoke appear to be strengthening (although I'm not sure Stoke are better off than if Campbell had not been injured) but I am not particularly seeing Swansea, Bournemouth, Brentford or Reading strengthening. Swansea lost one of their best players in Gibbs-White too.
Blackburn seem to be making decent moves. Bournemouth are now in talks with Wilshere who (I know it’s a big ‘if’) will easily be one of the best players in the division if he stays fit. Add that to Norwich, Preston and Stoke as you say - I’m happy with my statement. Could also be said we’ve added Zinckernagel so that gives it some counter-balance. As much as I think all the indications are we won’t get one, I just think this window will be easily seen as a failure if we don’t address our goalscoring issue - Zinckernagel is the ‘get out of jail’ option if he can somehow replicate a decent part of his Bodo/Glimt ratios. Gino has failed in many previous windows to address what was needed at the time - and many times he’s gotten away with it. But it’s coming to a head...as I’ve said before, I think this window is defining. I suspect we are going to sit on our hands, and watch others do business believing what we have is good enough...and will sack the manager again in a month or two when that’s found to not be true. I think failure to sort out the issues upfront in this window will be looked at for seasons to come as the moment we truly got stuck in the mud.
It has been stated that there will not be a striker coming in unless we move one if not two out. Those two are Deeney and Gray who will not go anywhere. Those two players are a massive hinderance on us moving forward
I know. I’ve been saying that since the window opened. It doesn’t mean what I’ve said isn’t true though haha!
Completely agree. You could also argue that Zinky is what Gino wants (an attacker who could impress and go for big money) rather than what the team needs (strikers and a midfield re-vamp). At the risk of repeating someone else's point, in the bottom 3 and only bringing in Pussetto was either massive arrogance, stupidity or being incredibly poor at finding / attracting players. Whatever option you choose, it's very poor ownership.
It's been the same issue for 6 windows at least. Have you watched Munoz's Huddersfield press conference btw? He genuinely gives a despondent puff of his cheeks when asked the question about the strikers, and he sounds much less enthusiastic and upbeat when answering it than he does when answering most of the other questions (even if he has to push the PR words of us supposedly having "the best strikers in the Championship").
I agree it’s been the same for a number of windows. A lot of us, including yourself, have rightly pointed to it time and again but it’s never changed. What I was trying to say is that by hook or by crook, we’ve come through those previous windows somehow ‘landing on our feet’ as it were by surviving in the PL. The January window last year was the absolute first hammer blow we didn’t recover from...and that obviously spiralled into this summer’s window by having to cut our cloth accordingly. And now we are at this juncture - if we don’t act in this window, it’ll be the one that causes us to be down here for a long while IMO. As more cost-cutting will be needed in the summer and it’ll be harder and harder for us to compete at the top end of this league. I don’t really bother watching the press conferences anymore - as I know the head coach is unlikely to be in position in a few months and whatever is said will be boisterous, grandstanding mumbo-jumbo interspersed with lines/info the club want to get out into the public domain and using him as their vocal vessel to do so.
