Not long after it was reported that Lucas Perez’s agent had given an interview saying the player wanted to leave, reports emerged that he was denying even giving the interview.

To be honest, it wasn’t clear for a while quite what was going on.

Then the Independent’s Ed Maylon got involved. He tweeted that the agent had denied giving the interview, and when asked for his source, actually gave one – he had texted Lucas’s agent.

The original quotes, claiming Lucas would leave at ‘all costs’, appeared, and were quite detailed on calciomercato.com.

What was fascinating with the denial story was watching how many supposed ‘reliable’ sites were willing to post about the agent issuing said denial without having a clue where the information was coming from. They spotted it on Twitter, posted an article as if it was fact without checking, and let it float out into the ether as they got lucky.

When the first batch of articles were going out, Twitter searches came up empty for anything approaching a reliable source. People were just repeating what was on Twitter with no indication where they got the information from.

We need to do better than this.

Update

Goal are now also reporting new quotes from Perez’s agent. “Lucas has a contract with Arsenal. We haven’t spoken to AC Milan.

“It’s logical that someone is unhappy if they do not play – that’s why he’s a professional.”