Wednesday Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham News and Links for June 19, 2019

Happy Hump Day, gang.

Social Media is a weird phenomenon. I used to be Facebook a lot. I’d post up numerous status messages a day, whether I was watching TV, saw leaves blow by my house or just felt like telling those who followed me that I was comfortable on the couch playing games.

Nowadays, I limit my social media usage. There are numerous reasons for this, though I admit that I use the Facebook messenger quite a bit due to group chats. Slack is utilized for other things, including the Carty Free writers’ room. Twitter is for short thoughts, funny gifs, and, sadly, for picking up on transfer rumors quickly. This time of the year, our writers’ room gets plastered with various tweets talking about the players Tottenham Hotspur are tracking and movement from other clubs. It’s a useful tool that, unfortunately, you have to wade through an entire ocean of garbage to get the gems.

All of us have our day jobs, and we’re lucky enough that our jobs allow us to socialize throughout the day about various topics. As soon as a transfer rumor hits the channel, we almost immediately begin discussing whether or not its crap. Here’s an example from Tuesday:

Ricky Sacks, if you’re not familiar with him, is an aggregator of sorts. He doesn’t link to the story, but posts the source at the start and says the main gist of things. It’s then up to us to determine the following:

A) Is this rumor remotely plausible?

B) Can we find the original story?

C) How trustworthy is it?

In this case, A Bola isn’t a great source. We’ve also taken almost every rumor regarding Bruno Fernandes with a truckload of salt because there hasn’t been a serious article linking Spurs to him. Phrases like “back in the race” are a red flag to us because it’s not really indicating anything. It’s like “preparing a bid” or “keen on a move” in other rumors. It’s basically someone throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks. Turkish and Italian media are notorious for this, as well. England doesn’t exactly come up roses either, given there are outlets like The S*n, Daily Star, Mirror and Daily Mail that are tabloids who sole existence are based on generating clicks for ad revenue.

I have a trusted list of sources that I follow on Twitter, and each have their own strengths when it comes to what they post. Dan Kilpatrick and Ben Pearce are both on the Tottenham beat and have sources, so when they mention something, there’s probably some truth to it. Alasdair Gold is another who has proven to have sources, plus he’s really good at interview transcription. Kristof Terreur is arguably the best guy to go to for Belgian football.

Twitter allows us to identify the rumors, but we pass on a lot of things we see. This is also why Dispatches from Bat Country exists on this site because, sometimes, we see a rumor so ridiculous it deserves to be mocked. A perfect example is back when Michael Caley wrote an article about a nothing rumor involving Andros Townsend back in the summer of 2015. Now, Townsend did end up at Newcastle, but not until the winter window. There’s also the hilarious saga of Julio Cesar Torres that I wrote about a couple months ago.

Our job here is to try and bring you clarity while throwing in our own humor. If we wrote about every single rumor that came out, it would dilute the quality of the site and we’d slowly turn into the very sites that we mock.

And now the “news”....

Platini arrested in Qatar World Cup investigation - NPR

I doubt anything comes of this, but FIFA and corruption are two peas in a pod.

FIFA holding secret meetings to discuss 2022 World Cup Move - TNT Sports

“We’ve investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing on anyone’s part. Excuse us while we go buy another penthouse.” - FIFA, probably

WWE is finally using NXT to its full potential - Deadpsin

WWE has a lot of problems right now. NXT is not, nor has it ever been, one of them.

Nats’ pitcher Max Scherzer breaks nose during bunting practice - ESPN

Reason #59083252 why we need the DH across all of MLB. I still laughed at the video.