You always know when you’re nearing the end of the football season and the beginning of the stupid season when the media and other pundits have to resort to scraping the barrel with sensational headlines and non-stories to fill their news pages and air-time.

They haven’t disappointed this season as they’ve already started shit stirring about nonexistent transfers and personnel changes. It’s almost like there’s a culture that encourages shit stirring as a means of selling copy and increasing ratings. I personally blame the 24 hour news cycle which thinking of it, is a nightmare for any news editing program.

I mean – what do you actually fit into 24 hours of a day. Just take some time to watch Sky Sports News or Satanta News and you’ll get the gist of it. You pretty much get a feel for the news in 10 minutes and the rest is recycled renditions of the same news, sometimes bordering outright diatribe and shit stirring.

Talk Sport radio isn’t any better – they take stuff off other sections on the media and they continue to shit stir it….(is anyone noticing a trend here…)

Take the case of the rumours from Spain about Cesc Fabregas’ imminent transfer to Barca for £45 million.

It’s worth noting first of all that rumour mongering for transfers is part and parcel of Arsenal’s summer cycle – usually its rumours and innuendo about those leaving the Arsenal. This shit started even as far back as 1891 when Derby County tried to tap up two Arsenal players after we played them in the FA cup that season….That was like 108 years ago.

The only difference between now and 108 years ago is that 24 hour media cycles were non-existent back then. There was never any opportunity for the amount of shit stirring that goes on these days.

So the Barcelona President Joan Laporta wants to initiate Barca’s traditional saber rattling. There’s this weird phenomenon in Spain where the top dogs go out of their way to use transfer rumours and diatribe as a campaign strategy…and Real Madrid and Barca are the best at it.

It’s hard to take these folks seriously because any seasoned football observer will actually tell you what’s behind this nonsense.

However, this 24 hour media cycle madness and the sheer pressure to fill in the news cycles has forced journalists and pundits to scour around for any little spec of information, even if it’s a non-story, take it and run like mad with it.

It’s the stuff of sensationalism that they hope will sell papers. Take Robin Van Persie’s interview recently where he spoke of his desire to win trophies. Firstly, I’d be disappointed if Robin, or any other Arsenal player for that matter, wasn’t hungry for trophies. I’m still struggling to figure out how Robin’s interview in its entirety translates to “Van Persie demands that Arsenal win trophies or he leaves”.

Notwithstanding the fact that Robin (like all other players) actually has a responsibility to get Arsenal to win a trophy, this sort of shit stirring is what I’m referring to. Speculators in the financial sector such as hedge fund managers did a lot of shit stirring about stocks and shares so that they could short sell and make a profit…and look what’s happened to our economy.

The media are the official shit stirrers of the footballing world in their haste to fill in air time and the likely result is players unsettled and a lot of diatribe that is not worthy of being broadcast being put out in the public domain.

Coming back to Cesc – Wenger’s pre-match press conference yesterday was telling.

Arsene was asked whether the behaviour and actions of Laporta and the public tapping up of Fabregas by Barcelona disappointed him – his response was right up there with the “priceless” category of MasterCard.

Why would I be disappointed? If I was disappointed it means I would expect another behaviour … which I don’t.

At one point, Wenger refused to answer any more questions about Fabregas or his own contract situation – and true to form, the media weren’t going to give up.

Wenger: “I won’t answer any more questions about one player, only about the team”.
Next question from reporter: “So are you confident that Cesc will stay?”

Need I say more about the shit stirrers?