Football.London have taken aim at logic and indeed maths with their latest on Arsenal's pursuit of Riccardo Calafiori and this is very much not the only nonsense to be found today. Mediawatch does the necessary.

CalafiornicationSome truly heroic work in the field of mad transfer nonsense from Football.London here with the following story.

Arsenal's lucrative pre-season plan can fund transfer for top target Riccardo Calafiori

Ticking lots of boxes here, we're intrigued.

Arsenal's transfer for Italian star Riccardo Calafiori could potentially be funded by their fans after the club announced a lucrative pre-season tour pass.

All we're going to say here, and we trust this isn't too much of a spoiler, is that the word 'potentially' is doing a quite staggering amount of heavy lifting here.

It is believed that the Gunners are finalising a PS42.1 million deal for the Bologna defender after making a breakthrough over a payment structure, with personal terms not expected to be an issue. Calafiori caught the eye with a series of fine performances in Serie A last season and gained plaudits for his displays at Euro 2024.

Okay, that's all fine. But let's get back to that funding plan, please.

However, despite the club pulling in funds through possible sales, there is a scenario where Arsenal raise money for the 22-year-old via their fans, thanks to a new pre-season pass. To do so though, just over two million fans would have to opt to buy the brand-new pass, which will give supporters access to Arsenal's pre-season fixtures.

Ah. Now Arsenal do have a lot of fans, but Mediawatch would be tremendously surprised by a 'scenario' in which over two million of them pay to watch some pre-season friendlies. We could be wrong about that, but we're definitely not wrong the uncomfortably grubby vibe we're getting from this.

Feels to us very much like an attempt to almost guilt fans into forking out for this pre-season pass. "No, you're not being gouged by yet another expense; it's going to buy us a lovely shiny new player, look." It would be grim enough from an official source, but really makes us uncomfortable from a supposedly independent one.

The club's 'Early Bird Pre-Season Pass' is now available for PS9.99 and will include live coverage of pre-season fixtures against Manchester United, Liverpool, Bayer Leverkusen and Lyon. Somewhat controversially, Arsenal has also revealed that some games, including their friendly against Bournemouth on July 25, will not be covered by the pre-season pass and will be available separately for PS4.99.

'Somewhat controversially' is it? But never mind that, think of the new signing!

So, could the club really buy Calafiori purely from millions of fans signing up to the pass? Let's do the numbers.

The logic states...

We're just going to interrupt here to say, as you'll soon see, that this is one of the wildest and loosest uses of the word 'logic' yet recorded in the English language.

... that if a whopping 2,105,000 Gunners signed up for the PS9.99 pass, and then bought the Bournemouth fixture for just under PS5, then that's each supporter sending the club just under PS20 each.

You've already spotted it, haven't you?

Therefore Arsenal could generate somewhere very close to the PS42.1 million to buy Calafiori without the club ever having to dip into their transfer warchest.

Yes, if just 2,105,000 people sign up to the PS9.99 pass, and then all pay another PS5 to watch Bournemouth, and then all agree to just round up PS14.98 to PS20, Arsenal could indeed get 'very close to the PS42.1million'.

Mind you, this is Arsenal and their fans do have some history when it comes to rounding numbers.

We're not even mad at Football.London really. We're mad at ourselves for clicking on it, reading it, and even more so for actually taking the time to work out that a fictitious army of 2,105,000 Arsenal fans each forking out PS14.98 to feed their insatiable appetite for pre-season football would in fact raise precisely PS31,532,900.

Cryptic clueMaybe the doubts over the pre-season pass numbers explain why Arsenal have not yet completed the Calafiori deal, with Arteta asked directly about it and giving what The Sun describe as a 'cryptic update on Riccardo Calafiori transfer'.

Asked if he could put a date on the Calafiori deal the Arsenal boss said: "No, unfortunately not - but we know there are certain positions we want to improve and give the squad better resources."

We are searching yet desperately struggling to find the cryptic bit. Maybe that's what makes it cryptic? Aaaahhhhh!

Quit playing gamesTwenty-first Century Journalism 101 from the Daily Express here.

Virgil van Dijk 'makes decision on quitting Liverpool' as Saudis lurk with menace

Virgil van Dijk has reportedly decided that he wants to stay at Liverpool despite being heavily linked with a move to Saudi Arabia.

Look at the starsPlenty of Premier League teams are jetting off on their lucrative pre-season tours and that means one thing and one thing only: looking to see which players aren't there and making a big deal of it. You've got two options when trying to conjure stories out of these squads.

First, pretend someone's easily explained absence is a bigger thing than it is. Secondly and more commonly, pretend the actually meaningful absences are of far more importance than is in fact the case.

The Daily Mail opt for number two with this headline.

Tottenham jet off to the Far East for their pre-season tour of Japan and South Korea - but two stars are left behind as they await moves to leave the club

The stars in question? Sergio Reguilon and Bryan Gil, who between them managed 201 Premier League minutes for Tottenham last season. Which is only two minutes more than Eric Dier.

I can be your heroAnd on a similar theme for the same club, a quick message to the Daily Mail subs. Jamie O'Hara is a great many things to a great many people. What he absolutely is not is a 'former Spurs hero', and the fact you yourselves have noted that he 'played 56 games for Tottenham' means we think you know this.