A number of people post with no idea of the reality of the club. The belief that we are hiding hidden gems in the academy is fanciful, without seeing any of the play is more so.

Little story for a Friday night:

If your planning application gets refused by the council you can appeal to the independent, government appointed planning inspector and try to have the decision reversed. The whole process is stitched up incredibly tightly, and impropriety is unheard of, though legend has it there used to be a guy on the inside who would, from time to time, in a very careful, clandestine fashion, contact would-be developers and offer to 'fix' their appeal in exchange for a big envelope full of used notes.

A few developers went for it, a few turned him down, and some tried to report him, though he was always too clever to get caught.

In the end, the medium-sized developers of the day got together and discussed the issue. They noticed that whilst there were plenty of times the brown envelope did the trick and got them their planning permission, there were also plenty who had got permission without the bribe. The only consistent pattern involved the mysterious insider suddenly returning the cash to certain developers with a warning that things had gotten 'too hot', and that he couldn't help them this particular time. Without fail these developers always subsequently ended up with a refused appeal. These developers of course accepted the refund and kept quiet.

What they worked out was that this Mr Fix was in fact just some nobody in the admin team at the planning inspectors offices. All the appeal decisions were made by inspectors in the normal, straightforward way. Mr Fix had no influence whatsoever, but would get early sight of the inspectors decisions whilst doing the photocopying or whatever.

What this guy had worked out was that if he picked appeals that had a chance of being successful, and got bribes from those developers, then half the time he'd be right, and it'd come off. He'd look like he was on the inside, when in fact he never was.

I've no idea if the story is true, but I always think of it when I read a confident ITK post like the OP.

Part of me thinks maybe Dazza has seen a contract for Lampard whilst doing the photocopying at Selhurst (after all, there surely are some people with that kind of knowledge for that kind of reason).

Largely though I think of the story because it reminds me that anybody can pretend to have inside knowledge when in fact they are simply saying that which is plausible anyway, especially when giving themselves the get out clause that their last insight didn't come off for reasons only they and other insiders fully understand. That, like Mr Fix at the planning inspectorate, is simply trading on the fact that you can be right often enough without knowing anything special at all...

Terrific story.

I heard one about Robert Maxwell which I would love to be true. Maxwell did not allow anyone to share his lift at the Daily Mirror (true) and his staff knew to vacate it if he stepped in.

One day he got in and this bloke in motorbike leathers didn't move. Maxwell demands he leaves the lift and the bloke tell him to get knotted.

"How much do you earn a week" said the now volcanic faced Maxwell. The biker mentioned a number and Maxwell thrust a wad of notes at him "you're never work for me again you're fired"

The guy took the money delivered his parcel and went back to his own courier company.

A number of people post with no idea of the reality of the club. The belief that we are hiding hidden gems in the academy is fanciful, without seeing any of the play is more so.

I watch every U18 game possible, there are some gems there. Are they ready for PL? Of course not but some will be within 2 years

Thank goodness you are not the manager