The cumulative effect of all this is that other teams will be very much on the lookout for deals we are interested in since they know they may well be able to outmuscle us financially and steal a real talent from under our noses. I cannot claim to know anything more than most of you but there has to be at least some chance that whoever bid for Joel Campbell did so only

I was in the US recently and had a conversation with my uncle about the benefits of the internet. My uncle, I must point out, is an old school, right wing, all-American hero sort of guy – hunting, flag waving, etc – and he suggested that the ‘innernet’ has actually hindered rather than helped his work, owing to time spent reviewing the exponential volume of information available.

His simple answer to the conundrum: “I think we should just get rid of the internet.”

Yup, sounds feasible to me too.

Obviously in this particular debate I was on the side of the internet, but there are definitely situations where the negatives of releasing information outweigh the positives, and one of these may lie very close to home indeed.

For some time I have wondered about the effect that the rapid spread of information – through News Now, blogs and especially Twitter – may have or have had on potential transfers into the club. As fans we demand to know as many details as possible as early as possible so that we can keep on top of the news, but can this unquenchable desire, and subsequent fulfilment of, ever hindered our attempts to bring players in?

This had all already crossed my mind before the news broke of a potential deal for striker Joel Campbell over the weekend. But almost as soon as it had broken the deal itself appeared break down as reports emerged that another EPL club had come in with another, ‘more economically’ interesting offer.

Now here was a situation in which Arsenal had moved for a relative unknown, already agreed a fee and looked set to complete until, at the eleventh hour, another Premier League club put in an offer. This deal had not been plastered all over the papers, in fact it had barely been mentioned, and yet another club seemed to know that if they left it any later they would miss out on this talented youngster. But how?

Now there are countless explanations for this and I’m not claiming to know the truth, but one might be that all the blogs and Twitterers typing furiously away about this unearthed gem may just have alerted another club to his a) talent, b) availability and c) soon-to-be unavailability.

This phenomnenon, if real, affects our club more than others for a number of reasons:

1) We have a superior scouting network which other clubs will look to utilise at every opportunity
2) We are trying to buy the best talent available
3) We cannot compete financially with many of our rivals

The cumulative effect of all this is that other teams will be very much on the lookout for deals we are interested in since they know they may well be able to outmuscle us financially and steal a real talent from under our noses. I cannot claim to know anything more than most of you but there has to be at least some chance that whoever bid for Joel Campbell did so only because they knew that clued-up little peasants Arsenal had done so already.

Then I saw this tweet from @Gunnerblog, who, bear in mind, was one of the first to break this story:

“So ‘Joel Campbell’ is trending. Oh dear. It’s only going to alert other clubs and make it harder for us to sign him.”

What’s interesting about this situation to me is that we have the very person who told the Arsenal world about the transfer then worrying about the effects of this information getting out.

I’m not in any way trying to disrespect or discredit Gilberto Silver for his great work in bringing the information to us to begin with. Not at all. We all wanted to know and he told us. Fair enough. But it does show that perhaps we cannot have it both ways – we cannot expect sensitive, inside information to be released to us on the web and at the same time expect that this information will not, at some point, end up in the wrong hands.

The internet is not restricted to fans of our own club and that is something we should make a point of remembering, even if it does not, and perhaps should not, affect our practices.

You may doubt that your words have the power to influence the outcome of transfers negotiated a thousand miles away, and that is entirely up to you. I however have my suspicions that we might just have a bigger say in the fortunes of Arsenal FC than many fans care to believe.

WB
@WengerBoy1