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Liverpool chairman Tom Werner has been forced to dismiss rumors that the club signed Stewart Downing on the basis of a YouTube video.
The England international has yet to score or assist a Premier League goal despite featuring in every league game so far this season, and a report emerged last week that chairman Werner and owner John Henry’s decision to sign the England international in a 20 million pound deal was influenced by a doctored video.
The YouTube clip featured the winger slotting balls into wheelie bins from long range, and the stories were supported by quotes from Werner from a dated interview with the club’s official TV channel.
Werner has since denied the rumors, and explained that important details had been left out of the story.
He told the club's official website: "Someone told me about this. It's a great story, but unfortunately for the person who wrote the piece, it isn't true.
"It actually comes from an interview I did five months ago with [Liverpool managing director] Ian Ayre for our club TV channel in which I said that when we first talked about signing Stewart, we'd found a video of him kicking footballs into some trash cans.
"I explained in that interview back in August we knew the footage had been doctored, but I guess that detail doesn't really help stand up the story. The amount of people involved and the work that goes into a signing a player is huge so the suggestion that we'd buy someone on the back of one doctored video is ridiculous."
The England international has yet to score or assist a Premier League goal despite featuring in every league game so far this season, and a report emerged last week that chairman Werner and owner John Henry’s decision to sign the England international in a 20 million pound deal was influenced by a doctored video.
The YouTube clip featured the winger slotting balls into wheelie bins from long range, and the stories were supported by quotes from Werner from a dated interview with the club’s official TV channel.
Werner has since denied the rumors, and explained that important details had been left out of the story.
He told the club's official website: "Someone told me about this. It's a great story, but unfortunately for the person who wrote the piece, it isn't true.
"It actually comes from an interview I did five months ago with [Liverpool managing director] Ian Ayre for our club TV channel in which I said that when we first talked about signing Stewart, we'd found a video of him kicking footballs into some trash cans.
"I explained in that interview back in August we knew the footage had been doctored, but I guess that detail doesn't really help stand up the story. The amount of people involved and the work that goes into a signing a player is huge so the suggestion that we'd buy someone on the back of one doctored video is ridiculous."
