Declan Rice is a prize example, Issa Diop was another (Spurs, Manchester United and Liverpool), currently Tomas Soucek, and no doubt before long, Vlad Coufal.
How and why this happens is no mystery – with the decline in newspaper sales and the rise in websites claiming to know what’s what, these stories are easy to manufacture and thus get lots of hits.
But it also means of course with nobody confirming or denying anything, certain websites, when not stealing most of their copy from one or two who do actually know the score, can write whatever they wish.
So here’s the point – the arrival of Tomas and Vlad has allowed the huge emphasis to come off Declan, particularly with the departure of Frank Lampard from Chelsea and onto the (excuse me) Czech mates.
Every bit of information we have is that none of the three are going anywhere because not only are they not for sale buy the fees that would be involved if they were involved are not accessible during covid financial times.
David Moyes is making all the decisions these days and the three big names are utterly essential to everything he is building.
Rest easy – the Hammers top stars are remaining exactly where they are at the very least until some degree of normality is resumed and that could be a long time into the future.
In the meantime we all have an understanding of the ‘hits happy’ sites saying otherwise.