I'm telling you this exclusively - Photo Wederburg CCA
Sounds like fairly big news, doesn’t it? It’s one of the Mirror’s biggest stories today, and comes in the form of an exclusive. Excited? Thought so. Let’s read on:
Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says Emmanuel Adebayor
Oh dear. That’s a bad start, and we’re only in the headline. If you’re going to make a big claim, you’d usually want someone who knows what they’re talking about. We can put this on a sort of scale, if you like, with five stars being the most likely to be true and one star being the least:
***** - Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says Cesc Fabregas/Arsene Wenger
**** - Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says loyal Arsenal teammate
***- Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says Cesc Fabregas’ agent
** - Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says Manchester City striker and former teammate with a massive axe to grind
* - Cesc Fabregas will quit Arsenal, says one bloke to another in a pub
This is the start point to our piece - the words themselves may be exclusive, but in their role as words to be held up to scrutiny and relayed to an audience as fact, they’re only marginally more relevant than idle speculation in a pub.
Still, we can look at the quotes themselves in a little more detail:
He said: “I think players like Fabregas will look to leave if they are not in the Champions League, but my focus is all on City now.
Wait! Is that everything he said about Fabregas? It appears that it really is. So many things to point out here, in just one solitary sentence.
“I think” - which suggests he doesn’t know. And that is hardly a surprise given that he has taken such steps to distance himself from his time at Arsenal. How we get from ‘I think’ to ‘will quit‘ is an interesting leap.
“players like Fabregas” - so not Fabregas in particular, suggesting there’s no tidbit Adebayor knows which he’s handily passing on to us about Fabregas’ plans, just that this affects players of his calibre/standing within the club.
“if they are not in the Champions League” - massive caveat alert! So not only is this a mere guess from a former player, but it’s also contingent on Arsenal not qualifying for the Champions League. Incidentally, as it stands today they are 3rd in the table with a game in hand. Just sayin’.
“but my focus is all on City now” - or, in other words, “I’d be much better at telling you how things are in Manchester than in North London.”
It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to suppose that the failure to qualify for the Champions League would make departures from Arsenal quite likely. We could assume that without expert assistance. But given Arsenal’s record of qualifying for the Champions League under Wenger (they’ve always qualified) it’s hardly something to trumpet as a huge exclusive.
And on the subject of exclusives, just where do these exclusive Adebayor quotes come from? A great personal interview with the Mirror? The clue lies in another piece in the paper today, and an interesting line at the bottom:
‘For the full interview with Emmanuel Adebayor see this month’s issue of loaded, on sale now’
Exclusively taken from a magazine. Which you can buy. Already. Thanks for that.
