Tier guide
Every score on this site starts from this list, which comes from the r/Gunners transfer reliability guide. A report's weight is its tier weight, adjusted for how strong the claim is, how recent it is, and whether the source said it first or is repeating someone else.
Only tiers 0–3 are used. Tier 4 outlets are not collected at all, and unranked sites only when a ranked journalist wrote the piece.
Tier 0 is the club. Only an announcement on Arsenal.com marks a deal Signed. A reporter's “here we go” can move a story to Imminent, but no further.
| Tier | Weight | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| Official | ×1.00 | Arsenal.com, u/arsenal |
| Tier 1 | ×0.92 | David Ornstein, BBC Sport, Sami Mokbel, James McNicholas (Gunnerblog), The Athletic, Hand of Arsenal (HoA) |
| Tier 2 | ×0.78 | Charles Watts, Amy Lawrence, Fabrizio Romano excluded, The Guardian |
| Tier 3 | ×0.35 | Gary Jacob, Gianluca Di Marzio, James Olley, Alexis Bernard, Mark Irwin, Sam Dean, Simon Collings, Manu Lonjon, Jeremy Wilson, Guillem Balague, James Benge, Andy Burton, Kaya Kaynak, Florian Plettenberg, Raphael Honigstein, Mark Ogden, Ben Jacobs, John Cross, Alex Crook, Tom Canton, Chris Wheatley, TNAT, Sky Sports, The Independent, The Times, The Telegraph, Bild, L'Equipe, Kicker |
| Tier 4 | ×0.30 | Kaveh Solhekol, Kike Marin, Nicolo Schira, Daily Mail, Goal, Marca, JOE.co.uk, Daily Express, The Mirror, Cadena Ser, Mundo Deportivo, BBC Gossip, Bleacher Report, AS, Metro, SportBild, football.london, Caught Offside, HITC, 90Min, Sport, El Confidencial |
| Unranked | ×0.12 | Anything not on the list. Not used, unless a ranked journalist wrote the piece. |
How the score is calculated
Likelihood is the chance the move happens. Each report adds evidence on a log-odds scale, so agreeing reports add up, but with diminishing returns. Two tier-3 reports count for more than one, though not twice as much, and neither comes close to a single tier-1 “fee agreed”.
Sourcing is a separate number for how good the reporting is. It comes from the best tier that has reported the story and how many independent sources there are. A story can be likely but poorly sourced, or well sourced and unlikely: Tier 1 saying a player is not coming is credible and low likelihood.
Attribution. A claim is credited to whoever made it, not whoever printed it. A ranked outlet can pass credit to a named source it quotes; an unranked one cannot, because “FABRIZIO ROMANO CONFIRMS” in a headline does not mean Fabrizio Romano said anything. A journalist's own byline always counts, wherever it appears.
Five things reduce a report's weight:
- Repetition. When an outlet runs the same story again, each repeat counts for 10% of the first report, and only 2 repeats count.
- Relaying. A claim is credited to whoever said it first, so twenty sites quoting one Ornstein post count as one source. A report that openly relays someone else counts at 30%.
- Pile-ons. The strongest source counts in full, the next at 60%, the next at 36%, and so on.
- Age. A report's weight halves every 7 days. Rumours are rarely called off in public, so a story that goes quiet fades on its own.
- Denials. A newer denial from a source at least as good changes the status and pulls the score down sharply.
A single report saying a deal is agreed or done needs backing unless it comes from tier 0–2. A lone tier-3 report of that kind is scored no higher than the rest of the reporting.
Gossip round-ups are not used, even from good outlets: the BBC's club “transfer rumours” pages, the Guardian's rumour mill, Sky's “Paper Talk”. They collect other papers' claims, and counting them as the outlet's own reporting would give a tabloid story a tier-1 badge. Live blogs and opinion columns are left out too.
Each player page has a Why section listing the reports that moved the number and what reduced each one.
Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Arsenal Football Club.
← Back to the tracker