The Guardian, all hype and no substance

The Guardian caused a twitter storm this afternoon, with chief sports editor Ian Prior teasing his followers with promise of a MAJOR football exclusive to be released at 17:30. Word spread and a frenzy was whipped up in no time #guardianexclusive was a trending topic. Were Manchester United being sold off to Qatari Royal Family? Lionel Messi involved in a Swap deal with Jo. Unfortunately not. What we got was this http://bit.ly/ghOdhi 

16 Paragraphs of rumour. If you don't want to read the full story I will sum it up for you. If Gareth Bale is not on the long term injury list, and allowing for the next flavour of the month to still be Bale, and financially insecure Inter want to spend £40m on one player. Gareth Bale is on his way to Inter in the summer.

Possibly Inter Milan bound.

Anti-climax. Branded a 'nothing story' and 'just a rumour' by Twitter users it took Tottenham Hotspur a grand total of 18 minutes to dismiss the rumour, saying that the story 'is not true. It's incorrect' and 'rubbish'.

The Guardian do a sterling job on the sports pages, and the story could turn out to be true. Ian Prior himself tweeted 'Hmmm. Campaign to unfollow me has healthy momentum. Can only say it's v well sourced and in a similar bracket to this http://bit.ly/Ijkfi '

The story linked in the above tweet is dated April 2009, and reports that Christiano Ronaldo is off to Real Madrid in the summer for £75m. Turned out to be true.

He may back up the Bale non-story with one which was correct, still doesn't distract from the fact they had a internet community pressing f5 for an afternoon just for a piece of rumour.