Five Outlets Report De Zerbi Sunday Press Conference, Each Louder, And It Stays Half Past Nine

The Evening Standard reported on Friday that Roberto De Zerbi will hold his pre-Coventry press conference on Sunday morning, after the Tottenham squad return from their training camp in Marbella.

The Herald has since traced the item through five further websites. It has found that the time, 9:30am, was carried across intact at every stage. Nothing else was.

The first website described the arrangement as unusual timing, a phrase taken directly from the original. The second described it as a departure from the norm. The third said supporters were being made to wait, which is true of every press conference ever held.

By the fourth site the manager was not speaking today, a statement that had been accurate since the dawn of the week and which nobody had previously thought to publish. The fifth called the situation a vacuum.

I'm not saying it's a cover-up. I'm saying it's half past nine on a Sunday, and nobody will tell me why.

The man, who made the remark across a kitchen table over a second round of toast, was reminded that the original piece gave the reason: the squad are in Spain and the match is on Monday. He said he had read that part, and that he preferred the version without it.

The updates on Dejan Kulusevski and Pedro Porro, which the original said would be delayed until Sunday, were by the fifth site awaited with growing anxiety. They are still due on Sunday, as before.

The Herald can confirm that across the six publications there is one press conference, one time and one day, and that between them they have added nothing to any of them.