Alan Biggs: Sheffield Wednesday are right to stay silent

So it’s good to see some familiar and largely trusted names on the linked list with Federico Venancio joining Jacob Murphy and Josh Windass.

The better the player - hence the better known - the easier he is to earmark.

Seeking rough diamonds to polish requires a greater depth of scouting and raw football intuition, especially considering the 12 point handicap.

Whereas what drives the market at a higher level is agents - because their clients are easily identifiable and become like chess pieces on a board.

Which brings me to caution about “transfer speculation”, because a lot of it is just that. You’ve only got to look to its primary source.

Most of it is dropped into the media by agents. Their motive? To grease the wheels, make something happen.

A few honourable exceptions here and The Star’s writers, among others locally, do unearth transfer stories against the odds.

Otherwise, this former purveyor of transfer tips - well, at least, not so much these days - advises a healthy pinch of salt.

Firstly, you’re going to get next to nothing from the managers and why would you? I’d clam up completely if I was them. Mind you, some operate in the shade, if not the dark, only sketchily aware of targets and certainly not state of play.

Allow me to indulge in a once-in-a-career occurrence that simply can’t happen ever happen again.

In the summer of 1992 I made a routine phone call to the then Wednesday manager Trevor Francis, expecting to be told only that he was “working on a few things” as a preamble to discussing the weather and holiday plans.

Instead, he announced: “I’m trying to sign Chris Waddle from Marseille.” And this was on the record - about something not even dreamt of, let alone rumoured!

At no time, before or since, have I known the like of it. Well, maybe once, when David Pleat told me he was after Trevor Sinclair. But that was among off-the-record steers that were once fairly commonplace and have now dried up (from managers) for reasons outlined above.

Naturally there were agents involved in the Waddle deal but this was a time when managers were more in control and, of course, a sensational coup duly happened.

Looking back, I think Francis’s reasons for such an unusual tactic were to demonstrate to Waddle how serious he was and to burn off the competition that way.

The only circumstance nowadays in which a manager will comment on a specific target is if the interest is already in the public domain and then only reluctantly.

But I believe you’ll get more honesty or, shall we say, less deception, from the manager than from the agent, who is never quoted and only stirs the pot with favoured journalists through nudges and winks.

Obviously some of these moves do get to happen, manufactured or not.

So it’s all a game within a game. Next time you see the Owls linked with a player, as they will be often because of the size of the club, stop to consider where the “information” has come from.

It will certainly not have been from owner Dejphon Chansiri or manager Garry Monk.

Wednesday are often criticised, with much justification, for being too remote and not communicating enough with supporters.

But in the area of transfers, albeit that this column has repeatedly questioned modus operandi, I believe the Owls are absolutely right to stay silent.