Arsenal fan’s hoax shows why Metro & Mirror are probably unreliable transfer sources

Yesterday, Arsenal made a massive statement to the rest of the Premier League as they completed the signing of Barcelona’s Chilean star, Alexis Sanchez. After having signed Mesut Özil in the previous campaign, the Gunners have quickly moved to add another star studded player in their side.

But before the move was made official, a few media outlets and Twitter accounts went crazy after Barcelona’s official website had apparently leaked the story of the move and then removed it, before it was made official. The Mirror ran this story on the site, as did the Metro with this piece here, and others too followed suit.

This image above went viral across Reddit, Twitter and those aforementioned media outlets. But once one checked the Barcelona website, no such story existed. This prompted the ‘journalists’ to run a story of how Barcelona accidentally leaked the article and then removed it.

However, as it turns out, this picture above emerged on Reddit by an Arsenal supporter as a hoax. He has since apologised and also proved how these big publications fell for the hoax and ran the story.

Although the Alexis Sanchez move was completed a few hours later anyway, this hoax has now proved from where the likes of the Mirror and Metro get their so called transfer ‘sources’. It’s alarming to note that journalists & editors working for these publications actually search across social media platforms like Twitter, discussion sites like Reddit & other forums for stories like these to run.

The Arsenal fan fooled everyone, but has provided a great service for the rest of the window.