Lies, damned lies, and Twitter rumours about Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti

Q. What does it take for thousands of people to take reasonable information and reach a totally unreasonable conclusion?

A. Twitter.

On Sunday night I had a big story to break. It involved Carlo Ancelotti's position and influence at Chelsea Football Club, and was the latest in a series of dynamite stories I had broken since the dismissal of Ray Wilkins ten days earlier.

Using trusted sources with verified information I had earlier been the first to reveal Michael Emenalo as the most likely successor to Wilkins; and had also broken a story about events in the lead up to Wilkins' departure.

As a journalist of two decades experience, I'm not keen on the modern phenomenon of the 'rumours persist' story - and I don't tend to give that sort of thing any truck.

When Ancelotti told me and other reporters under embargo at St Andrews on Saturday night, that his job was 'technical direction - full stop': we were all clear this was a big story.

News that the Chelsea manager is not even boss at his own club is, under any circumstances, an astounding revelation. Other, more experienced hacks than me, were so clear on how big a story this was, that they decided to trail it on Sky Sports on Sunday morning.

Trailing stories is a practice as old as journalism itself (and journalism is said to be the world's second oldest profession). It is effectively the practice of combining journalism and PR to get bit of a 'buzz' around a story: and everyone does it.

People who have followed me (@blueschronicle) on Twitter for a while (about 6,000 of them), know that I often have a big story to break about Chelsea late on a Sunday evening based on embargoed weekend quotes; and I always trail these stories.

The embargo means that I cannot go live until Monday's first editions hit the London news stands (around 10pm on Sunday night) so, around Twitter peak-time (somewhere between The X Factor and I'm A Celebrity - sad, eh?) I let people know to expect a big story.

Here's what I said:

Astounding revelation about Carlo Ancelotti's position at Chelsea to come tonight: follow here for more.

The tweet did what I had hoped: it got people interested. But it did something else at the same time: it set a small number of fans of rival clubs in action, winding up Chelsea fans. One tweeted that Ancelotti had just offered his resignation to Chelsea and that it may or may not have been accepted: and cited my original tweet as evidence of this.

Like a snowball running down hill, this rumour started to gain pace - and a small number of people contacted me to ask, specifically, if my 'astounding revelation' was that Carlo had quit.

So, 20 minutes after the first tweet, and with this rumour still very much in it's infancy, I released the following:

To calm people down a bit: the revelation is NOT that Carlo Ancelotti is going anywhere. Got that OK? Phew.

Pretty clear? Records show that this second message actually gained greater credence than the first on Twitter: in that it was re-tweeted by more people.

Here is where possibly the most significant turn of events happened: a minor celebrity with a well-known Chelsea allegiance and 100,000+ followers decided to tell the world there was a rumour doing the rounds about Ancelotti, and that I was the source of it.

I doubt this person intended to cause any bother, but celebrity (no matter how minor) does carry responsibility: and one should really check such 'rumours' before whispering them to a crowd roughly three times the size of Stamford Bridge.

Here is where things went a bit mental. My follower count, already on the up, started climbing by 30 per minute. Journalists from national newspapers bombarded the Chelsea press office with calls. William Hill suspended all betting on Ancelotti's future at Chelsea.

As I later said:

Just to be clear: I did not start any rumour about Ancelotti leaving Chelsea. He is not & I have explicitly stated that here.

But then we all know the modern mantra is 'don't let the facts get in the way of a good Twitter rumour'.

About 90mins after the original teaser, in-line with the embargo, I released the story:

Carlo Ancelotti reveals the new number two at Chelsea is... Carlo Ancelotti .

I can't deny I got a little bit of abuse from people who had believed other people's rumours, and expected me to produce Ancelotti's head on a stick. But for the most part I had supportive replies from people who were truly astounded by the news, and wanted to thank me for breaking it. I signed off with this:

Cheers for support guys: will continue to break Chelsea news here. Hopefully without Gooners and/or minor celebs taking it out of context.

So there's the story of the great Ancelotti non-sacking/resignation of 2010. Unlike a certain national journalist last week I didn't start a run on shares for a stock market-listed football club by tweeting completely without foundation, and during trading hours, that it was about to be taken over by an American printer company.

So move along now... nothing to see...