One thing we’ve learnt over a few years of dealing with transfer rumours in the foreign press is that just because an article is from the country the player is from doesn’t mean it’s new information or an exclusive.
An example of this is an article published in Le Buteur, a newspaper focusing on Algerian football, about Riyad Mahrez and Arsenal’s interest in him.
Their main source for the article is an ‘unnamed British journalist’, who has reportedly told them Mahrez will be an Arsenal player by the end of the transfer window, while the rest is ‘according to the British press’.
The only piece of information that appears to be theirs (i.e. there are no other named sources) is that Arsène Wenger met with the player and his agent to convince him to join them, which the player agreed to.
Also, as we’ve seen the information being wrongly passed around on social media, the £100k/week figure isn’t what Arsenal want to offer him, but the wages Leicester are prepared to shell out to keep their star winger at the club.
That Leicester want to keep Mahrez is no secret, but the news he rejected their improved contract also comes from England, alongside the claims the Premier League champions are annoyed of Wenger’s presence in the stands during their 4-0 loss to Paris Saint-Germain.
It’s all a big mashup of stories and quotes from interviews, which leads us to believe the entire article could be just a summary of the situation for their Algerian readers, rather than a big exclusive.
It’s certainly not presented as the latter, and even the title uses information from the British press (No Mahrez agreement for new contract).
We might be coming across as huge skeptics here, but this kind of stuff has happened so many times before that we’d rather give you our real opinion on the article than lead you along and get your hopes up!
