Last night I noticed a Tweet pop up from another Aston Villa blog which featured a headline along the lines of “Carew off to Turkey?” and I have to admit it irritated me. It irked me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the rumour mongering regarding John Carew has become a bone of contention with me and I’ve written several posts quoting both player and manager, hopefully painting a picture of content.

I first jumped on the opportunity to quote John Carew speaking of his love for Villa back in April 2009 to counter chitter-chatter among the fans.

I love it here, I feel it on the pitch. If I didn’t love it here you’d see that on the pitch. I’m really happy. I love the club, the fans, the staff and the group here, who are fantastic.

Then in August ’09 I outlined the chronology of the events that people seemed determined to use in order paint a picture of division between manager and player. I also took the trouble of quoting and sourcing MON making it quite clear how highly he regarded Carew.

[…]if he is fully fit and wound up he is an absolute handful. Teams do not like playing against him because he is so strong. He is pivotal to us. He is a definitely an asset to us.

And finally, in October ’09, I was able to quote the big man professing a willingness, perhaps a desire, to finish his career at Aston Villa.

I love it here. I love the football, I love the club. The fans have been unbelievable and I will never forget them. I love it here. I love the football, I love the club. The fans have been unbelievable and I will never forget them. If anything happens now, if I had to stop playing football tomorrow, I would still love the Villa fans.

But I hope I have some good years left. As long as my body feels strong and I can perform at this level, and keep up with how football develops. I feel I have some good years left. You never know what’s going to happen but as long as Villa are happy and I’m happy, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be here.

I think it’s quite clear that Carew likes being at Villa and it’s clear that Martin O’Neill really likes John, that comes across loud and clear in the BRMB forum interview. Of course things could change, that’s always a possibility, but there’s nothing in the “reports” to suggest that’s in any way likely at the moment.

Just Askin’

The second reason this Tweet and blog caught my attention was the use of the question in the headline.  This is a technique usually employed as a defense when the author has a pretty good idea that the contents are garbage, but they want some of that sweet, sweet action from the search engines.  You’ll see it time and again when challenged, “hey, I’m just asking the question”.  When you see tabloid style headlines featuring a question, it’s a good rule of thumb to assume that the answer is ‘no’.

Worse still, the post in question cited no sources, but used the “according to reports” line and then followed with a horribly hackneyed, tabloid-style formula of idle speculation and appeals to tenuously linked observations. You know, ‘Carew may want to leave because he’s been on the bench recently’ and ‘the manager and player have had a troubled relationship in the past’ type of nonsense.

I looked for those “reports” and quickly found Tribal Football and Mirror Football. Well, there’s your problem!!

The Mirror fleshed their piece out with lots of ridiculous speculation, but cited no sources and provided no quotes. I know, shocking, right? They did claim to have “sources in Turkey” though, but I doubt very much that the Mirror has an office in Istanbul, so I figured I’d be able to find their sources by searching for Turkish language posts on the interwebz.

Turkey

I found some evidence that there’s been some speculation about Carew moving to Turkey on and off since before he arrived at Villa Park. It seemed to crop up again last month and again a few days ago. I’ll save you the bother of translating those pages, there’s no more substance in them than in the Mirror’s article.

So, with all the evidence pointing toward there being absolutely nothing in this story, it’s fair to say I was pretty pissed off at a fellow Villa blogger just lazily parroting what is a fairly negative story from tabloid media. I reluctantly decided to take the author to task. Reluctant because that’s not exactly what I want this blog to be about.

After spending some time writing the post I decided that as much as I tried to avoid it, it read as too much of a personal attack and I binned it.  However, still irked, I set about a complete rewrite from scratch.

Late last night I finished a second version and was reasonably happy that I’d written nothing more than an illustration of the pitfalls of following tabloid journalism without a large helping of skepticism.  I scheduled the post to publish in the morning and went to bed.  However, I couldn’t shake the concern that I might appear overly pious and self-righteous. I was concerned that there was an underlying tone that a true Villa fan would know this story is nonsense and dismiss it, which is what I was doing and was therefore claiming to be a better fan than someone else.  Not cool.  Not the message I want to convey at all.

Commentary

Being 5 hours behind the UK, I try to make sure that I’m up to date on my RSS feeds with my iPhone before heading off to the land of nod as there’s always a stack of new blogs waiting when I get up in the morning.  I know, sad isn’t it? Somehow I had missed ianrobo’s post on the subject from earlier in the evening.

The difference here is that Ian is clearly commentating on the story and citing his source, not pretending that he is breaking a story himself as if auditioning for a job at The Mirror or somewhere.   He’s also not fleshing it out with gossip and hearsay in order to give it more weight.  However, he’s honest about Carew not being his favourite player right now and that bias probably leads Ian to give the story more credibility than it’s due, although he does include a good reason to cast doubt on the reports.

I don’t know Ian, but I read his blog and he strikes me as a very honest and passionate Villa fan.  I figured that if someone like Ian is giving the story any kind of consideration, albeit with a grain of salt, then my blog post on the subject really could be missinterpretted as a “I’m a better fan than you” type of post. I decided to unschedule the publication.

So this is the third iteration of the post and also the longest – if you’re still with me, thanks for sticking it out!

Agent Rubbishes Claims

Today Sky Sports are quoting Carew’s agent, Per Flod, in Norwegian media, Dagbladet, rubbishing the speculation.  Flod says that the Fenerbache speculation has been going on for three years, which is exactly what I saw when I searched Turkish media.  He also says that Panathinaikos are also generally mooted, so he won’t be surprised if their name comes up.  He also states that it was always their intention to sit down with MON in the summer to discuss Carew’s future.

And that’s really how things work.  Carew is contracted with Aston Villa until the summer of 2011, by which time he’ll be heading toward his 32nd birthday.  It makes perfect sense for the manager and player/agent to sit down with a year to go.  MON will have the option of offering Carew an extension beyond 2011 or, if he feels that the player might be getting a bit long in the tooth by that point, he has a couple of other options.  If MON wants to recoup some money for Carew he will obviously need to offload him next summer, or he could simply let Carew run his contract down and leave as a free agent for a bumper payday to finish his career.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it were the latter, we’ve certainly seen it before with Ollie and it allows everyone to part company on the best of terms, with warm memories.

Now balance this view with the Mirror’s claim that Carew was actually negotiating terms with Fenerbache and MON was helplessly sat by as one of his favourite players was being tapped up.  A claim that a quick Google search reveals has been repeated and repeated by now.  But does this sound anything like the Martin O’Neill you know?   It’s garbage from start to finish and I wouldn’t even wrap my chips in it.

Manifesto

Hopefully I’ve proven my case here.  Many of you will feel that it was entirely unnecessary to undertake such an odyssey, taking in Turkish and Norwegian media along the way, to call out such obvious bullshit.  I wouldn’t disagree with you, but it allows me to establish a manifesto of sorts for this blog.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong in commentating on speculation, as Ian has done for example, that’s probably a large function of a blog in the first place.  There’s very few bloggers with the resources to genuinely break news, so what else is there between matches?

I hope it’s clear that I don’t seek to advise anyone on how they should run their blogs, it’s entirely their own business, and I may well come across as sanctimonious here; but shouldn’t the role of fans with blogs, first and foremost, be as cheer leaders for the clubs we love?

I’ve said before, and it bares repeating, the club are not beyond criticism and I’ve no intention of blowing smoke up anyone’s backside. However, this blog will not idly repeat pathetic gossip and speculation, or sit on the sidelines, cynically sniping at anything and everything the club does.  If that means going a day or two here and there without posting, then so be it.

I remain as excited, if not more so, as a Villa fan as any time since the new regime arrived back in 2006.  No, we’re not the finished product yet, but we are still heading in the right direction.  The further we progress, the more frequently speculation about our players will appear in the media.  That means we’re doing something right.

Personally, I believe, as an Aston Villa blogger, this is the perfect platform to debunk gossip and speculation, not add fuel to the flames.  We may not be able to build a shield of disbelief around ourselves, as fans, and the club, but we don’t have to assist the siege of negativity that only grows the closer we come to challenging the perceived top four.

So I ask you, dear reader, as a fellow Villa fan, to be wary of articles without quotes or sources in both the new and old media.  Be skeptical about the motives of a blogger or journalist who is “just asking the question”, especially if you found them in your search for an answer to the very question they are posing.  And most of all, don’t be afraid of calling out bullshit where you see it, otherwise you just allow it to fester.  That’s not good for anyone.

And finally, this just in…

Case in point, just as I was about to publish this, Henry Winter from the Telegraph Tweets this…

His employer appears to be doing well when searching for the story:-

Now I’m not saying that it’s in Henry Winter’s interest to keep propagating this bullshit, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to just ask the question!! 😉