Albion Twitter page uses ALT tags to troll City and Romano over Cucurella

The admin of the Brighton & Hove Albion Twitter account has a well-established reputation for being one of the best in the business. Yet even by their high standards, the subtle use of ALT tags to troll Manchester City and Fabrizio Romano over Marc Cucurella has been absolutely outstanding.

Having seen a derisory £30 million bid for Cucurella dismissed out of hand by Tony Bloom, City have decided to deploy their usual trick of trying to unsettle a player they want.

City hope talking about said player in public will either force them to agitate for a transfer, or up the pressure and weaken the resolve of the selling club. Anything but Sheikh Mansour having to spend too much of his estimated £17 billion fortune.

Pep Guardiola has spoken publicly about his club’s pursuit of Cucurella. City have also briefed a journalist friendly to them, Fabrizio Romano, to start spreading the news that Cucurella is very upset at being held against his will by the Albion.

If you believe the City line and Romano’s insistence, you might be forgiven for thinking that this is hostage situation and Bloom has Cucurella chained up to a radiator somewhere in the Amex. Captain Phillips is now Captain Cucurella with Bloom the Somalian pirate wielding a submachine gun.

There have been instances in the past with off-the-field matters where Brighton have listened and bowed to the pressure put on them from the City boardroom.

Not this time though. Bloom has not been bullied. Judging by various reports from sources other than Romano, Bloom was almost insulted that City would bid so little for a man who won the coveted treble of Albion’s Players’ Player, Supporters’ Player of the Season and WAB Player of the Season.

City have just sold Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal for £32 million. To then try and claim the player they want to sign as an upgrade is worth less £2 million less is not how the transfer market works.

Unless you are City and believe you have a divine right to cherry pick any player you want from a smaller club, who should be bending over backwards to help you.

Now Romano and an army of plastic City supporters on Twitter unable to even point to Manchester on the map are crying foul that Brighton are making Cucurella unhappy by not selling him for far below what he is worth to the Albion.

Which has led to the Albion Twitter admin having a whale of a time. A few months back, Twitter added the feature whereby you can add an ALT tag to a photo.

An ALT tag is a description of what is going on in an image, used by search engines to pick up relevant keywords. Twitter uses can click on the ALT tag and they will see what the person posting it has used as a description.

Almost from the day that Twitter launched ALT tags, the Brighton admin has been using them to make entertaining comments for anyone who takes the time to click.

The Cucurella ALT tags are the admin’s best work yet. A picture of Cucurella holding a football from the recent Sky Sports and BT Sports media day is accompanied by: “Marc Cucurella holds an inflatable globe to his chest whilst smiling and looking to his left. He looks very happy.”

On Cucurella’s birthday recently, the Albion uploaded a photo of him with a birthday cake. The ALT tag: “Marc Cucurella peers around the side of a Piglet’s Pantry birthday cake, which he is holding with both hands, with a smile on his face. He looks VERY happy!”

And the thing is, he does. Cucurella’s bright and happy personality that were evident last season has not changed in anyway since the interest from the Etihad Stadium become very public, meaning we can conclude with reasonable certainty that Romano and City are talking crap.

With a month still to go until the transfer window closes, there is still every chance that Cucurella will be a City player before September 1st. But only if Abu Dhabi admit defeat in their attempts to bully Brighton into a sale and get close to Bloom’s asking price.

The longer this drags on and the more derisory bids City make, the less likely Cucurella is to move. And with any luck, the more trolling of their fans and Romano we get using Twitter ALT tags.