Ornstein vs Romano: Why the Vini Jr Arsenal saga shows transfer news isn’t as simple as right or wrong

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Plettenberg insists that a deal was not in place at that time, and again this might come down to how you interpret when a deal is done or not. Romano is well-connected enough that he clearly felt confident it was no longer at a stage when it could collapse, so he stuck with his guns and the move eventually went through.

But details matter as well, and there have been enough deals that fall through at the last minute to show that it really isn’t done until it’s done. In fairness, Romano’s ‘here we go’ may be treated as being as good as a done deal, but he could be justified in saying it doesn’t quite mean the same thing.

Everyone involved has different motivations

One of the things that makes reporting on these stories so challenging is that the multitude of different sources you can speak to will have different motivations.

The clubs – these tend to be the most tight-lipped until things are completed, but they’ll also have some trusted contacts in the media that are used to get their version of events out there. Many people think this is what was going on in the Bruno Guimaraes saga, which was reported as a done deal by Brazilian media one day, while reporters close to Newcastle claimed that club-to-club contacts only started a few days later. Leipzig, meanwhile, may have given a gentleman’s agreement to selling Diomande long before the structure of the deal was agreed between the clubs, and may have been keen for that not to get out.

The players and their agents – many people will think that Vinicius Junior and his agents ‘played’ Arsenal. We’ve seen this kind of thing happen before, so it’s perfectly possible that he never had any intention of joining the Gunners, but gave a strong enough impression that he could, just so he had more leverage to get a better contract from Real Madrid. Ornstein and others were clearly informed that Arsenal felt Vini’s interest in their project was genuine, so maybe he gave it real thought before deciding against it, or he’s just a very good liar. We’ll never know for sure.

The reporters – what we can assure you, our readers, is that everyone in the industry is always striving to get the stories that are of interest out there. Speaking to so many people with differing agendas can make it tricky, and there’s often pressure to be first to a big story, but accuracy is what matters most. Sometimes that means reporting on a deal that ultimately doesn’t materialise, but it’s rarely as straightforward as one source or another being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.