Shropshire Star

Matt Maher: Fantasy football a good story - but truth behind Jack Grealish leak more mundane

Was fantasy football responsible for news of Jack Grealish’s injury leaking prior to Villa’s match against Leicester last Sunday?

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It has certainly made for a good story. On Friday evening, as the online game’s latest weekly deadline for team changes loomed, a Twitter account called FPL Insider posted a tweet saying three Villa players – Matt Targett, Conor Hourihane and Neil Taylor – as well as a Villa performance analyst and a physio, ‘all transferred (Grealish) out of their Fantasy Premier League sides’.

Sure enough, on Sunday afternoon Grealish was absent from Villa’s line-up. Speaking after his team’s 2-1 win, Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers said he had been aware of the rumours Grealish might have been struggling with an injury. Villa boss Dean Smith vowed to ‘get to the bottom’ of the leak.

In recent days there have been stories about Premier League clubs warning players over the dangers of inadvertently giving away team news while playing fantasy football.

With automated Twitter accounts now able to track when a player is making changes, it is a genuine concern. But when it comes to Grealish’s injury, the truth is a little more mundane and the source of the ‘leak’ probably a little more old-fashioned.

While the tweet from the FPL Insider account might have added fuel to rumours Grealish might be injured, those rumours had already been present on social media for several hours, offering rather more detail than could be gleaned from someone simply deciding to take him out of their fantasy team.

The reality is that – as is so often the case in football – someone, somewhere, talked. There are close to 50 people at Bodymoor Heath who will have known Grealish had not trained on Friday. While clubs will always do what they can to keep injury news quiet, keeping a lid on the fact the star player might be carrying a knock between then and kick-off against the Foxes was always going to be unrealistic.

So too is asking players and club staff not to participate in fantasy football, the official version of which is played by more than seven million people (the suggestion Villa have ‘banned’ players from using the game is thought to be somewhat exaggerated). Still, there is no excuse for not now being aware of the potential pitfalls and risk of inadvertently leaking sensitive information. After the last week, the chances of anyone at Villa making the same mistake again might be considered somewhat remote.