Idea for a TV show, or at least an Athletic feature: everyone talks about transfers all the time (as usual) but with a difference: the people involved are only allowed to speak and behave with maximum honesty and disclosure in everything they say.
Imagine the carry-on we’ve seen around Carlisle United this week but with the illusion completely dismantled? Hilarious.
It would start with Sky Sports reporting not just that Carlisle had rejected a £250,000 bid from Blackpool for Owen Moxon, but also the source of that information and why it was given to them in the first place.
“Another breaking story now in League One – and yes, it’s another negotiating tactic thinly disguised as news…”
It would involve Moxon’s agent releasing a statement about his own intentions and motivations in this summer’s market, relating to potential moves and potential contract improvements, confirming which strings he's pulling at any given time.
It would also, on the receiving end, see Carlisle tell it even straighter than they attempted in their own statement, which was not bad for sincerity as it was. It would first go back and delete the line 24 hours previously about not commenting on speculation, and then they would begin with: “Carlisle United do comment on speculation, and here goes…”
We would then be told who had indeed bid and how much. We would not be informed that Owen Moxon is not for sale, because in League One, at a club of Carlisle’s size, and indeed every club as far up as Paris St Germain and even those Saudi clubs intent on throwing ludicrous sovereign wealth at ageing English midfielders, everyone is on some level for sale.
There is not a ring of barbed wire around Moxon that would remain if the right price was offered up by somebody, the same going for practically every single other professional.
So this would be duly underlined, amid the other passages standing the club's ground as well as they did, and only in the world of maximum honesty and total disclosure would the Blues then be able to get away with a sign-off that said: “We hope this puts an end to the speculation.”
In this world, where nothing is real, that struck you as a cheque United surely knew could not be cashed. Not a single further report, piece of gossip, tweet or ITK expert putting it about regarding their star midfielder, from this day forward?
Yeah, I reckon that might be ambitious. And ambition is no bad thing. But it only tends to pay off when it’s accompanied by realism. Which Carlisle will also have known even as those words were typed, for the particular reasons they were typed.
Just one massive game of shadows, all this, isn’t it? A supremely-talented lad from Denton Holme is in the middle of it and, as ever, is someone you hope is being cared for as the shenanigans go on, and all parties try to gain whatever edge they can.
You sensed this was where the summer might point even last season, when Moxon was emerging as such a bright star in Carlisle’s team. There was also a scent of it in early pre-season when the player himself did not sound as though he was sprinting towards a contract extension right at that point; reminding us, in as many words, that he is also a participant in things, not a passive player.
Events of this week have, then, followed a course which in football we’ve long conditioned to accept as normal – and which, albeit in different shades, has been the case for generations in the game.
Knowing who and what to believe is a nightmare, frankly. If you’ve any sense you’ll suspect everyone, even inanimate objects, of selling you a line. Don’t look for naïve and/or innocent parties, because there aren’t many.
Just about the most honest person you will find at Carlisle United is Gavin Skelton, the assistant manager: the sort of man you’d entrust with your PIN number. He has been given post-match media responsibilities during pre-season and on Tuesday was charged with facing questions on Sky's Moxon story.
He did so with the broad, defensive bat which often leads Skelton to joke that he would be no good in English cricket’s Bazball era. No reverse-sweeps and ramps from him. But did even Skelton believe what he was saying when he doubted whether “anything was going on”, stressed that the player was “absolutely fine” with it all and that things were carrying on just as before?
Did these words hold complete currency when, yes, things were clearly going on, as we discovered for certain the very next day? As for Moxon, only he and those directly around him know how he’s truly feeling in the circumstances, but given this is the first time in his career when he’s been the subject of a real speculation-whirlwind, it is reasonable to wonder how this could affect a youngish player's mind.
And things are different, like it or not. Moxon’s every touch now is of a player we know somebody wants for six-figures and a player we know his current club wants on a more lucrative deal, both at the same time, as well as an individual the world of transfer social media wants an opinion on. This was not public, to this degree, before this week.
What remains, you’d like to think, is the pinprick of light in all the shadows: Moxon’s football ability, his capacity to rise above the mundane level of lower-league games, for producing rich quality on the ball and also for retaining some of that burning pride in doing so in the shirt of his home-city club.
What also remains – and what also rose strongly from that United statement – is Paul Simpson’s wish to drive standards at Brunton Park, to build something meaningful and to do so knowing that appearing easy meat to cynical operators at the first sign of friction is not the way this will happen.
If Carlisle can hold onto both of those things, or even just the latter, they’ll have a chance of coming through this, eventually, with their heads up. All in all, though, it’s an exhausting and frequently unedifying old business, making you gladder than ever that it’s Saturday, and at 3pm we can briefly get back to the trivial matter of some blokes kicking a ball around, the only shadows the ones falling across the pitch for an hour and a half.
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