Don't Believe The Hype

Everyone and their mother this afternoon is spreading the word that TH14 has signed with Barcelona, and like a viral outbreak the stories seem to be growing exponentially.

Don't Believe The Hype.



Most originate from an article printed in France Football which alleges that an agent of Barcelona and Henry's agent have agreed to a 3 year contract and they are now only waiting on Arsenal and Barca to agree to a fee.

First off, this isn't really how it works. A club has to agree to sell a player under contract, and then the player negotiates his salary with the new club.

Secondly, this France Football article is no different than the million other silly season articles, 99.9% of which turn out to be compete fabrications. Here's how it typically works: some press outlet, hoping to drive traffic/sell papers, prints a story and spins it to sound like fact, when in reality the whole thing is being put forth be either an agent of a club or a player's agent in an attempt to advance their cause. For the club it is to land a player; for an agent it is to move your player for a huge fee that you will receive 5-10% of.

Either way, they try to throw this out in the hopes that somehow, magically, falsely saying that it is on the brink of happening will actually make it happen {usually the hope is that it will destabilize the relationship between current club and player- in this case, Henry will see it, call Wenger all pissed and "WTF dude?", they will get into a huge fight about it, and the player will then say "well fuck it, I think I will leave to go to club X", or whatever the case may be}.

This Henry to Barca shit has been going around in the Spanish papers for weeks, and now as the season ends and "silly season"begins, it will just ratchet up even more.

In the end it is a load of bollox intended to sell newspapers.

Do not believe the Henry to Barcelona stories until you see a picture of Henry in the Nou Camp holding up a Barca jersey or scarf to the assembled press and Catalan fans, or an official statement from Arsenal Football Club.

I am putting myself out there a bit and saying with confidence that this is all bullshit. It is possible that in the next 24-48 hours that I will be made to look like a fool, but methinks it is all of these so called respectable mainstream media outlets that will be made to look like fools in the end.