BY LIAM NEWMAN

One of the great things about football is that its omnipresence provides a constant talking point for everyone. We all have opinions on the beautiful game and those sharing those views with friends often serves an even greater importance to our lives than the match itself. Essentially, football is more than just 90 minutes; it dominates our lives on a 24/7 basis, and we should always look to celebrate that love of the sport.

Player transfers are always a hot topic of conversation, and every supporter loves to dream about the prospect of a star player joining their favourite team. Like any other fan, I love to keep abreast of the latest rumours. However, I’ve become tired of seeing links that have less chance of materialising than my hopes of taking Mila Kunis out for a beer and a burger at the local Spoons. I can’t be alone in that boat of antipathy, but I’ve found a new solution: Football Whispers.

Having come across FootballWhispers.com by complete fluke a couple of weeks back, the world’s first transfer predictor has become the latest addition to my internet bookmarks. In its most basic form, the website collates all the latest transfer information to rank the reliability of rumours. However, this is clever stuff that has been created with the help of The University of Sheffield’s Computer Science department, providing a regularly updated transfer index system to ensure that those transfers never go under the radar again.

Despite still being in its beta state, the website carries an appealing design that is both easy on the eye and easy to navigate. Whether it’s checking the hottest rumours or searching for links to your club, information can be dragged up in seconds. The website is powered by Opta too, which gives the website an extra sense of authority.

I’m not entirely sure how the website crunches those numbers and stats from around the world, but it certainly saves the hassle of sifting your way through the list of websites, social media pages and newspapers to get the latest news. This makes it a crucial tool for any football fan wanting to stay ahead of the latest pub talk or start thinking about the possibility of new signings. At this time of year, this is one of the few sources of excitement to keep fans of mid-table sides interested.

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The website boasts a number of other snazzy features. By signing in through Facebook, users can also add particular players and teams to their ‘My Whispers’ list, which is essentially a favourites bar, thus making it even quicker to track the latest ongoing news for your team. Meanwhile, you can also view the confirmed ins and outs of any given team over the course of the campaign at the click of a button.

Once you’ve opened up a particular team or player, it will also drag up quick links to the latest and most relevant news on that club or individual. For anyone wanting to track the progress of their supported club, this is a fantastic free resource while the quirkiness of the transfer predictor is certainly something I can advocate.

Football Whispers isn’t solely about crunching the numbers relating to potential transfers. The website additionally boasts a meaty blog section. Whilst the bulk of those posts are at least partly associated to the notion of transfers, the insight of the content cannot be knocked. This is definitely a site produced by a team of football enthusiasts, and it shows; as genuine football lovers ourselves, those passions for the sport are wonderful to see.

Given that it’s still at the beta stage, I’d expect to see even greater improvements over the coming months, but I cannot say that I’m not impressed. What I really like is that the index doesn’t simply make up rumours for the sake of it. At the time of writing, only 10 players carry a whisper rating of over 2.0 (rumours are ranked between 1.0 and 5.0). Whether you’re a casual supporter or a seasoned football connoisseur doesn’t matter, nobody enjoys wasting time reading the nonsense. Football Whispers takes this problem out of the equation.

Meanwhile, the free smartphone App makes it possible to drag up the information on the go too. Even if you only have a couple of minutes to spare, it’s a great way to keep on top of the latest transfer gossip while the blog offers great reading material (of course, after reading The Football Pink) for those train journeys and other moments of boredom.

Football Whispers is easily one of the best new platforms that I’ve come across in 2016 so far. If you’re a football fan that loves to know the latest stories before anyone else, it’s a worthy addition to your browser or smartphone.

Check it out now at FootballWhispers.com