By Paul Sorene
Transfer Balls looks at today’s reporting on Liverpool star and Arsenal target Raheem Sterling.
The Daily Star leads its sports coverage with news that Sterling is off to Arsenal. David Woods has an “exclusive”. He “can reveal” that Arsenal are buying Sterling. He can also”reveal” that Liverpool are buying Arsenal’s Theo Walcott.
Well, maybe. Or maybe not.
This “exclusive” was first reported in a fact-free Daily Mirror story two weeks ago. The Star’s scoop contains not a single new fact about either player. Woods says Arsenal would pay Walcott plus £20million for Sterling. Given the figure of £50million touted for Sterling, that values Walcott at £30million.
How he arrives at these sums is through the process of ‘guesswork’.
We do hear from Arsenal in the Sun, where team manager Arsene Wenger says:
“We have a core of five or six players who have been here for the last seven years and we wants to keep that nucleus.”
Does that group include Walcott, who joined Arsenal in January 2006? It’s unclear because the Daily Express quotes Wenger thus:
“We now have a core of players, a good balance of players…who have been here for up to seven years and a few that arrived one or two seasons ago. We have a good balance.”
Walcott arrived at Arsenal nine years ago. Given how guarded and careful Wenger is with his words, it might well be that Walcott, who will have just one year remaining on his current deal at this season’s end, is on his way out.
Such are the facts.