You have to hand it to those brazen sods at The Daily Record, don’t you?
I particularly love it when they use the line “Record Sport exclusively revealed …” when, in fact, they have done no such thing. Today, in claiming to have “scooped” everyone on Odsonne Edouard they really are taking the piss. How do they have the brass ones to even attempt that?
Without ringing my own bell – the tip came from Phil in the first place, so there was no bell to ring here, not at all – this website said months ago that we’d sign Odsonne Edouard on a permanent deal. Before Ibrox. Before Beautiful Sunday II.
The manager made his own decision on this last year and this site has written about it several times since then. Did we have “the exclusive”?
It takes a particularly bold “journalist” to write in one line how they beat everyone to the story in the first place and then to make it clear, in the very next one, that they’ve nicked their whole follow up piece from a website in France. But here we are;
“According to RMC Sport, Edouard underwent a medical on Thursday ahead of a transfer that could cost up to £9million.”
On top of that, there’s an established time-frame here as most of the press was well aware, and it expires on Saturday. That we hadn’t signed him until this week meant – shock horror – that the signing would have to take place this week, so really it required no sources, no inside knowledge, no special wisdom, just somebody who could look at a ringed date on a calendar.
When people say to me that a monkey could make a living working at The Record this would be the kind of thing they mean.
The article bugs me in other ways as well. “Brendan Rodgers’ side have been given until close of play on Friday to force a deal over the line,” it reads, as if PSG got tired of our waiting and demanded that we either get the wallet out or waste someone else’s time. The deadline was in place – and so was the fee- on the day the contract was signed. It’s not going to be “forced over the line”. The clubs are happy, the player is very happy, and the deal will be done.
Honestly, I know I complain about the state of Scottish sports journalism but there was a time when the phrase “Exclusive” actually meant something.
I’m not sure what the hacks at The Record think it means.