At the start of last week, a surprising name was mentioned as a contender to become the next head coach of Leeds United. Raul was linked with the job after the sacking of Jesse Marsch in February. Presumably that was Victor Orta’s idea — as manager of Real Madrid’s B team, Raul was coaching in the same Spanish lower leagues from which Orta signed such luminaries as Samu Saiz, Hugo Diaz, and Rafa Mujica – so it was jarring when his name resurfaced last week, unless Angus Kinnear has inherited an interest in Spain’s third tier from his ex-bestie.

Is Raul even any good? No idea. He keeps getting linked with bigger jobs, but managing Real Madrid Castilla seems like a cushty gig, a guaranteed way of always being in the frame to take over at the actual Real Madrid if they decided to follow Barcelona’s lead with Pep Guardiola by promoting a club icon from the reserves. But failing to win promotion with players reportedly wanted by Borussia Dortmund and Chelsea isn’t a great look. Would we even want him? Fuck no! If Leeds United is good at anything, it’s holding a petty grudge — so don’t think we’ve forgotten this filthy cheat robbing us of a famous result at the Bernabeu by punching the ball into the net in the Champions League over twenty years ago.

Is it worth worrying whether we’re going to appoint such a shameless Leeds-hating bastard? Well, probably not. Last Monday, Leeds fan Jordan Brown was chatting to his friend Tom about the betting market for United’s next permanent manager. Partly inspired by an old TSB prank when the lads invented a rumour that Danny Welbeck was a target for Leeds, Brown thought, “Fuck it, who sounds like a realistic bet?”

Be interested to know where this one originated. 🤔 https://t.co/x97pQb15Se

— The Square Ball (@TheSquareBall) July 4, 2019

After posting a few messages on the forum WACCOE saying Leeds were being linked with Raul, Brown tweeted SkyBet asking for a request a bet on Raul being appointed. He was given odds of 20/1 and stuck a tenner on. Raul had entered the market. He is still 20/1 with Bet365, but has drifted to 40/1 with SkyBet.

Brown replied to a couple of more fan accounts on Twitter mentioning Raul until the rumour was entrenched in the internet’s ether. Adam Pope tweeted he was among the names ‘swirling around’. “By that time the odds dropped on SkyBet and then Twitter blew up,” Brown says.

It’s going to be Raul isn’t it? Another experiment!! We have to get Farke in, he’s proven twice he can walk this league! We’re going to Leeds this up aren’t we #lufc #mot #alaw pic.twitter.com/WVF9L7wRDB

— CJ Slater (@CJ_Slater16) June 21, 2023

A ‘scouting, highlights, and analysis’ account tweeted: ‘After reading this Leeds Live article on what Paraag Marathe looks for in a manager, I strongly believe that their pick is going to be Raul Gonzalez.’ One of the reasons was that he makes his players arrive for training an hour and fifteen minutes before it starts and doesn’t let them bring phones or headphones into the facilities.

He’s a cheating handball bastard who can fuck off

— Millennium Lufc (@MillenniumLeeds) June 20, 2023

When I graduated from university, I freelanced for a company that owns a portfolio of different sports websites. Sometimes I worked shifts for a site that specialises in transfer rumours and speculation. It was less than a decade ago, yet clickbait back then seems quaint compared to today. The main trick was to leave a player’s name out of the headline, instead referring to someone like Joel Campbell as an ‘Arsenal ace’ or Jay Spearing as a ‘former Liverpool star’.

Without wanting to sound dramatic, it was soul-destroying work. It didn’t matter how spurious the rumour or how unreliable the source was, if another website was running a story about a player or manager moving clubs, we’d have to churn our own version out even if we knew it was bollocks. I once spotted a story on the site suggesting Leeds were interested in re-signing Lewis Cook. When I asked the person who wrote it where it had come from, they told me another clickbait site had reported it. When I clicked on that story, it was an opinion piece suggesting Leeds should re-sign Lewis Cook. It didn’t matter, they had ‘Leeds’ and ‘Lewis Cook’ in a headline (or rather ‘former Leeds academy hero’), so we had to have a piece of it too. As long as there was the caveat ‘according to reports’ and some single quote marks in the headline — two tactics that scream ‘don’t shoot the messenger!’ — it was fair game.

This cycle of bullshit often leads to vacuous sagas where websites publish transfer rumours citing another website, which credits another website, and on and on until you’re led back to the website where you first read the rumour, who seem to have forgotten they originally made it up to start with.

So basically this means that reports in Belgium confirm reports in England about reports in Belgium that cite reports in England, right @HLNinEngeland ? https://t.co/cCqtNBnqEY

— Gabriele Marcotti (@Marcotti) July 14, 2021

The world of clickbait has progressed. Now it’s common practice to smash two or more dubious stories together, so if ‘X’ happens then ‘Y’ will have to do ‘Z’, making headlines so convoluted you have to read the story just to know what the hell it’s on about. That’s created a strange subsection of Twitter dedicated to accounts with the patience to click such headlines and scroll through the first six paragraphs of auto-playing adverts so they can strip away the waffle and tweet: ‘Sampdoria want to sign Caleb Ekuban [Calciomercato].’ It has also created the more respected and exclusive — but equally deranged — corner of reporters who work twenty hours a day cultivating relationships with agents and executives so they can tell us ‘Fulham have signed Ryan Babel. Here we go’ a couple of hours, or sometimes a couple of minutes, before we find out the move has been officially confirmed.

These headlines and tweets now inspire the various strands of modern football media (enjoy our blog, podcast, and YouTube channel? buy our merch! …or our merch!), making the noise even louder, which brings us back to Raul becoming Leeds’ next manager. “You’ve got lads doing full tactical breakdowns of bloody Raul,” Brown says.

Even when a new head coach is sorted, this isn’t going to stop. As Leeds rebuild their squad this summer, it’s going to be a loooong transfer window featuring plenty more Rauls joining the club. The 49ers could help fill the vacuum by appointing a new manager some time soon, but it won’t change the fact we’ll only know who it is when we know who it is. Just don’t put your money on it being Raul. We don’t want that cheat anyway. ⬢