Arsenal: Jose Reina To Gunners Is Most Ridiculous Rumour Of the Summer

Today's transfer rumour linking Jose Reina with a £23 million move to Arsenal ranks among the most improbable I have ever heard.

I would not give this particular story too much credence if I heard it from a reputable source. The fact that it appears to have emerged from The Sun, a newspaper which is not exactly synonymous with scrupulous standards of reporting, only serves to strengthen my cynicism.

The reality is that there are simply not enough transfer stories out there to satiate the appetite of the public for footballing news. So in the absence of a genuine transfer rumour to report, journalists have occasionally been known to concoct one of their own.

Unfortunately, there are always a wide variety of online sources and social networking web sites through which these transfer stories get reproduced.

In this way, stories which might have originally existed only in the imagination of a bored journalist on a particularly quiet news day gain both momentum and credibility.

The reasons I find this particular rumour so improbable are as follows:

Wenger has never spent £23 million on anyone, let alone a goalkeeper.

Reina signed a long-term contract less than six months ago.

Liverpool would not want to sell one of their key players to a rival club.

Liverpool are about to lose Javier Mascherano; they won't want to let any of their other key players leave.

If Arsenal had £23 million to spend, why Wenger would not be trying to sign 37-year-old Mark Schwarzer?

On one hand you have all of the above facts. On the other hand you have an article which appeared in the back pages of an English newspaper which has a history of publishing stories which are sensational, but not necessarily factual.

So while it might remain within one of the outer realms of possibility that Arsenal have indeed made a £23 million bid for Jose Reina, it remains highly improbable.

Transfer rumours can be judged by a fairly specific set of criteria. The key factor is the source.

If a story comes from a source which you consider to be reliable, then it is probably plausible.

If it comes from a source which has a history of producing sensationalist stories about transfers which never actually materialize, then it should be treated with anything ranging from suspicion to contempt.