It is the very nature of today’s football media that a single unsourced report can escalate into reports in mainstream media if it is just believable enough to create clicks and conversation.
Yesterday, just minutes after Bloomberg announced the Friedkin Group were closing in on a purchase of Everton, a sports website broke the news that ‘sources’ had confirmed the Friedkin’s first order of business was to appoint ex-England manager Gareth Southgate as a replacement for Sean Dyche.
The rumour works perfectly. Despite his heroics as England manager Southgate is widely considered to be a limited football manager at club level. His sometimes dour, over-safe football has been derided and his links to Manchester United in the summer led to fans of rival clubs gleefully sharing the news.
READ MORE: ‘Stability and culture’: How the Friedkin’s will run Everton in their own words
So it makes sense that when Everton finally have some good news some want to turn that around into something that will drive plenty of mirth from rival fans online and Southgate hits that spot perfectly. It was first reported by GiveMeSport, which cited its own ‘sources’ close to Friedkin.
It was then amplified by other websites with headlines such as ‘Everton identify 54-year-old £5m manager’ and other misleading snippets. These secondary reports even stripped out the carefully placed ‘could’ and ‘nothing confirmed’ aspects of the original report, instead turning it into an almost inevitable new signing for Everton.
Apart from how disrespectful the whole thing is to both Gareth Southgate and incumbent Everton manager Sean Dyche, it’s also blatently untrue for a number of reasons.
The Friedkin’s have not actually taken over Everton yet and with financial issues still to sort including the acceptance of Leadenhall for the repayment of the A-Cap loan – a loan subject to a court case in New York, as well as Premier League and FA approval, the deal is still at least six weeks away from completion.
Even when it does go through nothing has been suggested to say the Friedkin Group would remove Sean Dyche immediately. It took a year for them to replace Paulo Fonseca at Roma with Jose Mourinho and their first comments on taking over the club was one of stability. In fact, the only replacements they discussed were at executive level.
Then there is Southgate. He actually has a job as a technical advisor to the FA, which he has said he will do until at least the end of the season. He is also in no rush to take another job and the turmoil at Everton does not sound like something he would want.
After leaving the England role he said: “I’m just going to take some time, refresh, recharge and go from there. I think at the moment people know that I need to get my energy back. I am not going to rush into anything I want to make sure I make good decisions.”
We should also look at GiveMeSport itself. Why would a journalist team with the inside track on the favoured manager of Dan Friedkin not break the news of the takeover an hour earlier? If they have a fast line to the inside workings of the Friedkin Group why did Bloomberg, Sky Sports and several others beat them to the biggest news of the year for Everton Football Club? Why is this the first bit of Friedkin news ever leaked as an exclusive on the site?
Then we have the famously reticent Friedkins. They say as much in their statement when taking over at Roma. They do not communicate often with the fans, letting big decisions take place behind closed doors. Jose Mourinho’s appointment came from nowhere and there were zero rumours of Daniele De Rossi’s sacking and the subsequent appointment of Juric at the Roma. The Friedkin’s simply don’t leak news and certainly would not leak potential managerial targets for a club they don’t yet own to a relatively small UK rumours website. It simply would not happen.
I’m sure the journalists at GiveMeSport are honest, talented writers. I’m sure that if Sean Dyche leaves Everton Gareth Southgate, along with Graham Potter and tens of other potential candidates will be discussed. But there is absolutely zero chance Friedkin has his eye on Southgate or that any sort of discussion between the two has taken place yet.
It’s simply another rumour to try to knock a club that fans hope will be on the way to turning its fortunes around.