The first thing that caught my attention this morning when I opened up my twitter feed was the "news" that Ajax has agreed to sell Gregory Van Der Wiel to Chelsea FC for the fee of 8 million. He'd fill an obvious need and we've been linked in the past, so this was one I thought I should look into. Tweets like the one below are pretty much all that is out there:

Reports today that Chelsea have agreed an £8m fee with Ajax for right-back Gregory van der Wiel. Personal terms yet to be agreed #CFC

— Chelsea Transfers (@CFCTransfers) June 1, 2012

None of these sources claim a specific source, although some loosely point you to the "Dutch media". Scanning all the major papers in the Netherlands gives you nothing to back this up though, and seeing as nobody has pointed us toward a specific source, it's hard to put much stock into this "news". With that in mind, I thought I'd share a few good rules to live by when reading news on twitter.

• When twitter explodes with a rumor and not a single tweet contains a link to a source, it's probably bogus
• When 5 hours after twitter broke the news you haven't seen anything in the British tabloids, it's probably bogus
  
• If Goal.com or sites of that ilk don't run with a story, it's probably bogus
• If someone's twitter handle contains the letters ITK, you should probably assume that nothing they type has any sort of research involved and is therefore bogus

It's entirely possible that we do, in fact, end up with Gregory Van Der Wiel. As I mentioned earlier, he fills a need and he's not going to cost a HULK-like figure to acquire. With a year left on his deal, he's made it clear that he's leaving Ajax for bigger and better things. That said, when somebody does actually have a credible source that a move has been completed, somebody is going to publish something on the matter. Seeing as nobody (credible or otherwise) has bothered yet, I think you can just assume this id the work of some idiot that gets some sort of satisfaction out of garbage like this. I'd suggest not getting too worked up about this, as there really doesn't appear to be anything there.