Reds dismiss Downing rumours

Posted Monday, January 30, 2012 by ESPN

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner has described reports that Liverpool signed Stewart Downing on the basis of a YouTube video as 'ridiculous'.

Stories this week emerged that Werner and the club's principal owner, John W Henry, decided last summer to push through an eventual £20million deal for the former Aston Villa winger after seeing clips on the internet.

The Liverpool hierarchy were said to have been dazzled by a doctored video featuring Downing slotting balls into five wheelie bins from long range, and quotes from Werner, from a dated interview with Liverpool's television channel, were used to support the story.

But Werner on Sunday dismissed the suggestion and was disappointed key details were left out of the original report.

"Someone told me about this," the American told Liverpool's official website. "It's a great story, but unfortunately for the person who wrote the piece, it isn't true.

"It actually comes from an interview I did five months ago with (Liverpool managing director) Ian Ayre for our club TV channel in which I said that when we first talked about signing Stewart, we'd found a video of him kicking footballs into some trash cans.

"I explained in that interview back in August we knew the footage had been doctored, but I guess that detail doesn't really help stand up the story.

"The amount of people involved and the work that goes into a signing a player is huge so the suggestion that we'd buy someone on the back of one doctored video is ridiculous."