Sunday was a day filled with a little panic as reports surfaced that Laurent Koscielny had refused a new deal, so clearly wants to leave Arsenal after having his head turned by Bayern Munich’s interest, right?

Where there’s panic, I often find there’s nonsense, so I thought I’d have a look and see what was going on.

The Daily Express seem to be the starting point for this rumour, in the UK at least. That they don’t mark it with ‘Exclusive’ tells me they got it from somewhere else on the internet, but don’t mention their source.

This report was then been picked up by the whole internet who have rewritten it for their sites and tweaked the odd detail making the story seem infinitely larger than it actually is.

Kos is out of contract with Arsenal next season and it would seem odd that the club have not already tied him down to a new deal. That’s something they like to do when a player has two years left on his deal but this is likely explained by the fact he only signed a new one two years ago.

Now would be the time another should be forthcoming, given his contracts have all come at two-year intervals (2010 signs for Arsenal, new deals in 2012 and 2014).

There is absolutely nothing that makes you think that Kos stalling on a deal, if he actually is, has anything to do with him wanting to leave. Players rarely ever accept the first deal they are offered and if it’s true Arsenal want to pay him £90k per week, perhaps he (rightly) feels he should be up in the £100k range and what is happening here is merely a case of two parties negotiating to find the best deal for both sides.

Imagine that. But that doesn’t really make a good story, does it?