Rumour Mongering: Reds Open Hart Discussions with Manchester City

On Saturday, Simon Mignolet made a key mistake that helped to ensure another dispiriting result for Liverpool as the Reds fell 2-0 to Hull City. It didn’t take much more than 24 hours for the tabloids to start linking the club with goalkeepers, starting with Inter Milan’s delightfully named Samir Handanovic.

Today, those same rumour mongers are reviving an old name: Manchester City loanee Joe Hart, currently also in Italy where he’s plying his trade with Torino. As with Handanovic, it’s Italian papers driving these rumours, which are then being picked up in England without much by way of thought or filter.

Rumours have had Liverpool speaking to Manchester City about Hart ever since last summer, and every month or two since they’ve popped back up again. The clubs were meant to be discussing terminating his Tornio loan to allow a permanent switch in January but those rumours turned out to be false.

Of course, that they were widely rebuffed by journalists with ties to the club and amounted to nothing hasn’t stopped them being used now to help support the latest round of rumours—to point to them as though they’re proof of interest and what’s happening now is simply a logical continuation of said interest.

It almost certainly isn’t. Because at each and every stage, each and every incidence, there has been no fire beneath the Joe Hart smoke. Just some desperate rumour mongers with an overworked smoke machine they’ve rolled back out this week with many Liverpool fans eager to see a few goalkeeper rumours.

Rather than making this latest round of the rumour more plausible, pointing to supposed past interest that didn’t actually exist only makes the latest seem less likely. At least for those paying attention. Which is something rumour mongers are generally counting on people not doing.