As a former sports journalist, I'm only going to cover what I know to be true in the following post — how the transfer rumour mill works for English newspapers. I cannot speak for the practices in other countries, except to say that I don't see why there'd be many fundamental differences.

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Preface

“Trust” is in quotations because really, you shouldn’t be trusting any transfer rumor no matter who it comes from. The most accurate newspapers are wrong 70% of the time when it comes to these stories, so while they are always fun, they’re also overwhelmingly unreliable.

Why are they so inaccurate? A number of reasons. But first, we need to do away with the idea that newspaper journalists sit down at their desk in the morning and decide to make shit up, especially tabloid journalists.

The men and women who write these stories are specialists, for all intents and purposes. They aren't hired to the sports team and told to find out what the deal is with Pogba it if they don't have the means to do so. They are paid for their extensive networks with player agents, team staff, and others that are close to players. The better you are at doing this, the more you succeed in the industry.

So if you're reading a transfer rumour courtesy of the Sun, or the Mirror, let's do away with the notion that because the newspaper itself has done sketchy shit in the past, that means this is also sketchy. They're not hiring bullshit artists, they're hiring people who are actually pretty damn good at finding out what is going on behind the scenes.

Anyways...

The reliability of transfer rumours is so poor because:

1. There's no way to prove how many are right. When a journalist is told Player A wants a move to Team B, we don't know if that's the truth unless it actually happens. Even then, the player might not have wanted that move at all, but ended up at that team due to machinations started by their agent.

2. Source motivation. Transfer journalists know full well that some of the information they receive from player agents is nothing but a transparent effort at leveraging more money out of a potential transfer or contract deal. This can be established by confirming with another source from within the club, but that is rarely possible. If you ever read "...multiple sources confirmed", you can be sure that there is a significant amount of veracity to what is being said. The better newspapers approach these kinds of stories with a more lighthearted tone, while others may turn them into an entire back page splash.

So Who Are the Best?

Lucky for us, the fine folks at footballtransferleague.co.uk have analyzed this already.

Keep in mind though, these stats are only for confirmable accuracy. That is, these stats are based off only what we can be sure was wrong or right.

Source	Correct	Total	Accuracy
The Guardian	337	949	35.5%
Daily Telegraph	365	1234	29.6%
The Times	429	1498	28.6%
The Independant	228	810	28.1%
Daily Mail	1344	5905	22.8%
The Sun	1096	5041	21.7%
Daily Mirror	2072	9553	21.7%
Daily Star	783	3715	21.1%
The Express	592	2944	20.1%
The People	160	1086	14.7%
Metro	181	1309	13.8%

As you can see, it's the tabloids that are producing the most true stories, but at the same time are producing the most wrong stories as well. This happens because, as mentioned above, there's no way of telling what stories are true or not unless they pan out.

Are they throwing shit at the wall in the hopes that some sticks? Eh, there's probably a little bit of that. Actually though, they just invest more heavily in those stories because that's what readers buy the paper for.

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So what is the takeaway?

1. There's no getting around the fact that tabloids produce good transfer rumour stories. We can trust other newspapers more, certainly, but let's not keep the circlejerk going about how they're just peddling bullshit.

2. I'd ask that we be more wary of digital-only outlets.

In the off-chance a writer who has access to player agents is actually working for an online only publication, there is no incentive for accuracy. The only incentive is to attract clicks, as that is how you set your advertising price points. In other words, more clicks = higher ad value.

Anyways, that's my piece.

Happy Transfer Season to all of you

EDIT: I'll be around to answer any questions later on in the day. My motorcycle was stolen from my front yard less than an hour ago, so I'm gonna go deal with that.