Making Alexander Isak to Liverpool ‘simple for simpletons’


It’s undoubtedly a hard gig writing transfer stories – you are reliant on agents, on clubs, on players, on sporting directors, on Saudi Arabian despotic regimes, to feed you information. Do you take it at face value? Do you take it with a pinch of salt? Or do you fear you might literally lose your head and just report everything verbatim without an ounce of retrospection or self-awareness?

But it’s important to remember that unless you are Fabrizio Romano and this is your billion-dollar business, it’s all essentially fluff and nobody really cares or remembers if you are wrong. Unless, and this caveat is crucial, you are an absolute dick about it.

Which is how we are arrive at Luke Edwards of the Daily Telegraphwho has been more than adamant for the vast majority of the summer that Newcastle will not sell Alexander Isak.

Like this adamant:

And this adamant:

And this adamant…

And this adamant…

It’s actually extraordinary how adamant he was that Isak would not be sold – because that was what he was repeatedly told – when every single person with more than a passing knowledge of professional football knew that it was only a matter of time before Isak joined Liverpool. This transfer was an unstoppable force and Newcastle were never an immoveable object.

So you might think that he would be feeling pretty damned sheepish when Newcastle agreed a fee with Isak late on August 31? Because only a ‘simpleton’ would ever have believed that were possible. And we would ‘see who is right on September 1st’…

Well now it’s September 1 and what we see is that Luke Edwards is very, very chuffed with himself. As chuffed as a small child who ‘went to toilet’ in his potty for the first time. Because he finally got it right. Yes, the people who told him repeatedly that they would not sell Isak, eventually told him exclusively that they were selling Isak. RESULT!

Astonishingly, this prompted a ‘boast post’. Take your time with this because it is a belter…

He does kindly admit he ‘was wrong to say that Alexander Isak would not be sold this summer’ but claims his information ‘at the time’ was ‘steadfast’.

We have some sympathy for anybody given a bum steer, but Edwards’ job was never to parrot what he was told by certain parties without question and then combatively take on allcomers who dared to challenge the propaganda.

The sensible approach was surely to couch the information as Newcastle repeatedly ‘insisting’ that Alexander Isak is not for sale, not taking on anybody who demurred with ‘he’s not for sale dickheads, see you on September 1 for one of my kitchen dances’.

Talking of which…

How hard are you cringing and are you all the way inside out?

Little tip: When your wife ‘jokes’ that you gave your children no attention this summer because you were busy writing propaganda for Newcastle United, maybe don’t write a ‘boast post’.

Writing ‘at the time everything was as it was told to me’ is not the flex Edwards clearly thinks it is. You’re not supposed to write ‘everything as it is told to you’. That’s PR. If they tell you it’s raining…

To the replies and ‘I was wrong, but in the end right’, when the right bit was proving himself wrong, might be the stupidest thing Mediawatch has ever seen written down. And we have seen a lot of stupid things written down. And not all of them by Luke Edwards.



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