Somebody – and possibly a few somebodies – was probably fired from the web department at Fenway Sports Group this morning.
Chaos insued when their site ran a story claiming Liverpool had “added Clint Dempsey to a team that game (sic) within a game of winning the FA Cup.”
In case you were wondering, that “sic” part means, in journalism lingo, that yes, they did in fact make that typo, not me. I’m assuming that’s as good a tell-tale as any to the haste in which this story was put up on the FSG website.
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Oh, and also the fact that, according to Fulham, they haven’t even received a bid for the 29 year old.
According to the London club, via their communications director Sarah Brookes:
“There has been no bid from Liverpool, or any other Club, for Clint and we would discourage any potential bids”
That’s a pretty darn definitive statement, especially considering they certainly weren’t forced to add that last part about discouraging bids.
I sent a request for a statement from Clint Dempsey’s agency, James Grant Sports Management, but haven’t heard anything from them.
Overall, this is just flat out a massive blunder by FSG. How does something like this happen? I don’t even know. Yikes. There are still multiple reports that this is close to being completed, which would make this a case of where there’s smoke there’s fire. We probably won’t know until everything’s completed, however.
For what it’s worth, Dempsey did not feature in the squad that played Lokomotiv Leipzig today. Whether that’s because he’s barely trained (which is true) or some other reason more fitting for a conspiracy theorist remains to be seen. But also absent from the friendly were Duff and Rodallega, so I wouldn’t read too much into that.
UPDATE – Brendan Rogers confirmed on Liverpool’s official website that they have indeed enquired about Dempsey, but no more than that. This is not good at all for Liverpool. Suffice it to say Fulham are NOT happy about this statement. Things could get ugly in the coming hours/days. Could this be the end of the discussions? It remains to be seen. But it’s clear Fulham officials are furious over this revealing of inside talks.
