The Media and Kim Min-jae

Before we get into the football talk, it's steak pudding tonight.

I remember my Mum used to make homemade steak and kidney pudding, delicious, although I'd pick out all the kidney of course. Now it's cheating time, microwave them, perhaps I'm going to have to recreate the past.

It'll be boiled potatoes and vegetables tonight with nice thick gravy.

Perhaps I shouldn't have turned down the woman who asked me to move in, she was a tremendous cook!

OK,back to Twitter.

Children in their twenties, yes children, they haven't matured yet, many still haven't in their thirties, all showing varying degrees of understanding of the football world.

A man who has never applied a tactic in his life is a master tactician who will tell a serial winner how to do his job, with the firm belief they actually know what they are talking about, which all to frequently they don't.

Then thee are the ITK wannabes who know very little about how football works off the field, how transfers work and even how the media works.

My readers keep pointing out to me, and thanks for doing so guys, that what I write will later appear in ITK or in the media.

Back in the day, a reporter would have contacts within a club and they would get fed information.

The papers discovered that if they printed transfer rumours then sales went up dramatically, hence why you see so many transfer stories, some true, some completely made up.

If you have an incessant need to keep producing material for advertisers to expose their wares then on a slow news day, you will simply put two and two together to make five and write it in such a way as to appear to be news you have received.

This is how Football London works.

People then associate you as having contacts you don't have.

OK, here is how the press works today.

1. It scours the Internet and foreign press for stories, then writes a story.

2. Everyone then copies the story (rewrites it)

3. The Twitter wannabe media guys report it

4. Everybody talks about it

5. Journalists scour blogs and local newspapers

6.They rewrite the stories they find

7. The nationals, TV, radio etc then report (as fresh news they have discovered) the news they have "stolen" from elsewhere and like Sky Sports do, pretend they have a "source", when the source is actually where they have stolen it from.

So you see, the media industry is based on theft of information.

You go and ask any public relations firm, any firm who handles press releases or media marketing and they'll tell you the same thing. 

Now I am fully aware of the process, I have had extended family in the industry, I have travelled with journalists who don't hide how they operate.

Tell a story, regurgitate a story, tell the story again because someone else is telling the story, re-tell it yet again because the foreign media are reporting the story, ask a question about the story to rewrite the story again and if the manager mentions anything about the story rehash the story as a new news story!

The story hasn't changed.

Club A has just watched a player of club B, that's all.

But for the press, that's interested in signing, that's are preparing a bid for (do you seriously think a club tells a reporter we are preparing a bid!), making enquiries about, making an offer for etc.

All the same story just written in different ways from the same information with an added guess here and an added guess there.

I'm sticking with my stance.

There is news that South Korean centre-back Kim Min-jae is flying over for talks and I was asked about it by several of you so immediately penned an answer..

Now I don't know if that is true, I suspect not because my information is that he is flying over at the end of July.

I am expecting to see him sign in August.

Fly over last week of July, negotiate, which probably won't take long with rough financial packages already agreed and sign on the dotted line when a deal is reached with his Chinese club.

Personally, if I had to guess, I'd say he would sign in the first week of August.

This is football and anything can happen but on everything I know, that is where I'm deploying my flag.

A reminder for those who are new here, he is a 6'3" giant who South Korea start all their moves through, the South Korean Harry Maguire.

He could well develop to be as good as, if not better than £80m Harry Maguire and we are buying him for under £20m.

I'm excited by him,a season of adjustment, helped by Son Heung-min and we could have a rock solid set of centre-backs on our hands.

With Jan Vertonghen, Juan Foyth and Cameron Carter-Vickers departed, we could see:

Daddy: Toby Alderweireld

Senior: Eric Dier, Davinson Sanchez

Junior: Japhet Tanganga, Kim Min-jae, Malachi Fagan-Walcott

As we saw with Willian, anything can happen in football.

Something set in stone can simply change in an hour, a new circumstance, a new player becoming available, a deal falling through, a player making a decision to leave a club.

Predictions in a transfer market are fraught with danger.

We'll see what unfolds soon.

Have a great weekend guys an gals.