9% hit rate - An Investigation into TNAT Transfer Reports

Going through the receipts of all the reports that the ITK account posted and it isn't pretty

I have been harsh on an account known simply as “Team News and Tix” and it has caused a bit of a pushback about him after I wrote it up. That got me thinking that it might be good to take the time to actually go and check back on everything that he has ever reported.

In general, I find the “In the Know” type accounts at best amusing, at worst bordering on a grift to make money on people who are desperate for news.

For the most part, this account was the former. I didn’t really believe anything that was posted from the account (and accounts like them, preferring to wait until it is further along), but it was pretty harmless and for people who played fantasy Premier League, he seemed to have genuine information about the lineups for teams ahead of the official announcements.

In May of 2024, he made the switch from it being a harmless whatever to something that made me a little less okay with it, switching to posting his news only on his Patreon account. I am not against people making money, I do charge here for my work (and will have no regrets that this is a paid post after the work I put into it), but it did feel predatory from the outside to put on this show of knowing secret inside information, while being anonymous and not exactly forthcoming with things.

I was also not entirely comfortable with his level of accuracy that he showed with his reporting but I hadn’t done the work to track it so I couldn’t really say anything at the time.

Since then, I have gone through and done the investigation looking at the reports he has made and with some hindsight and checking of things using date filters rated each thing he has said for how accurate it was.

There will be tracked with the following ratings:

• True reports that seem to provide new novel information that hasn’t been shared elsewhere.

• True reports that are not new information.

• Reports that could be true, but are not able to be verified.

• Reports that turned out to not be true information.

• Report that didn't have any real new information.

To judge this, I went through his twitter with his first posts there coming January 2022 and going all the way through the present after he started his Patreon account. This will focus not on his team news information but his other reporting that he did for transfers and other types of news. To be completely fair his team news by all accounts is very accurate but if you don’t do fantsay the value if probably very low and I did not rate any of these reports.

Overall, he made 139 reports/predictions with the following breakdown of ratings.

• 9% - True reports that seem to provide new novel information that hasn’t been shared elsewhere.

• 29% - True reports that are not new information.

• 16% - Reports that could be true, but are not able to be verified.

• 49% - Reports that turned out to not be true information.

• 5% - Report that didn't have any real new information.

Only a 9% for new information that turned out true being reported is not great especially compared to 49% of the reports which turn out to be completely wrong. The biggest thing that drives me crazy not and leads me to not believing him is that he implies that he knew things but didn’t report it at the time that he knew it while he follows other people reporting items. He is also not great when he actually has gone ot on a limb making a predicition that isn’t piggybacking off what others have written.

I don’t know if this is better or worse than other people in the transfer rumor game (I would like to go back to not knowing about this), but I do at least know that those people don’t make you pay for that poor track record for the benefit of not getting any great information compared to just watching the rumors or waiting or information to develop.

I understand that some people will still like this type of reporting but I can’t help but see that this is like a carnival physic who is doing a cold read on people, doing a report based on an educated guess from the total information available out there. Honestly, there are lots of times I feel like I could make up the information that happens with these rumors.

Below I will go through every single thing that he has posted online and include my judgement for what he posted. I have tried to be as fair as possible on the ratings but know I don’t have the most want to believe starting position. If I got something wrong please let me know and I will take a second look at it.

The Tweets

Right off the bat, we get an example of where I don’t think he’s super clear when he reports. This will become a bigger problem later when he goes behind a paywall and he uses as a way to discredit the people that aggregate his reports. It is so confusing, does this mean very unlikely and the person is wrong, or is it actually something likely that happens. (it did happen)

If with hindsight you know what happened it can be said that this is right, but it is a hedge bet using unlikely compared to actual report which was very clear and he is piggy backing on someone else’s report rather than going with his own information.

Verdict, True report that is not new information.

Arsenal did not sign him Broja and it did not seem like it ever even got close, it is again piggy backing off another reporters information and implying that he knows about it. Monitoring is such a lame cop out too, I am calling this a miss.

Verdict, Report that turned out to not be true information.

He has to piggyback off someone else’s news again and didn’t post his own. It does end up happening on the 12th. Partial credit here for saying the date.

Verdict, True report that is not new information.

This is weirdly written, but it implies Manchester United are trying to sign Pau Torres. They did not sign him.

Report that turned out to not be true information.

Not a lot to go off here, he does end up signing a contract in the middle of June. I will give this a pass, even though we don’t know if this was the final push (Sami Mokbel said final offer came at the end of May not the beginning of May).

Report that could be true, but is not able to be verified.

Tottenham do sign Spence. This is a pass as I didn’t see anyone else with this information at the time of this nor do I really remember it because I am not a Spurs fan. Interesting that he has Spurs news here.

True report that seem to provide new novel information that hasn’t been shared elsewhere.

Newcastle did not sign Tierney.

Report that turned out to not be true information.

United did not sign Torres.

Report that turned out to not be true information.

Tottenham did not sign Kostic.

Report that turned out to not be true information.

Piggyback off others reporting, adds something that implies he knew but didn’t report it. No credit here.

True report that is not new information.

Manchester City did not sign Cucurella they did seem interested tho and it was reported by others, they did sign Kalvin Phillips. Others had reported the Phillips links previous to this, so not new information.

True report that is not new information.

Piggybacking off other reporting again. Can’t say if that was discussed but Zinchenko has not once played as part of a midfield 3 for Arsenal, only as a left back that tucks inside in possession.

True report that is not new information for the interest

Report that could be true, but is not able to be verified for the midfield 3 part (generous rating IMO).

Not really giving anything new here, just repeating what Ornstein is saying. Richarlison does end up joining for the 50-10 million deal.