Newspapers have always speculated about possible player moves - it helps shift copies and arguably meets the needs of fans, who all enjoy a bit of idle gossip and speculation. Such stories are often based on little in the way of hard facts, using "sources close to the club" and "insiders" to flesh things out, but in this context, it's usually a bit of harmless fun.

What has been happening in Scotland over the past couple of months has, however, arguably crossed the line into manipulation of the market. Willie McKay, an agent whom fans consider to have a dubious reputation, and one of the few agents who refused to comply with the recent investigation into corruption in the English Premiership, began representing Kevin Thomson and Scott Brown of Hibernian earlier in 2006, and almost immediately began pushing for moves for them both. When his initial efforts were rebuffed by the club, he waged an increasingly bitter campaign against Hibs, using a complicit newspaper as his main weapon. Most recently, it ran a story with extensive 'quotes' from Brown, claiming that the fee Hibs are seeking for him is too high.

Now the newspaper, you can imagine, is quite happy with the arrangement. They get the inside information on a story involving two of the most highly-rated players in Scotland, and as long as the story runs, they can generate more and more copy. As the Hibs board have a long-standing policy of "not commenting on speculation", the paper has only one source for these stories, yet that has not dulled their enthusiasm. It is time to ask, however, if this blatant disregard of all the basic tenets of responsible journalism is acceptable.

For one thing, anyone who knows Scott Brown personally will not believe for a moment that the quotes attributed to him actually came from his own mouth. That is not to say he didn't agree to them appearing alongside his name - almost certainly he did. But if even supposed direct remarks from an individual can now be ghost-written, it makes the reader question if anything in the paper can be taken at face value. Secondly, although Hibs are not speaking to the paper, surely they have a duty to investigate the situation anyhow, rather than just print one side of the story? Their most recent effort was to print a claim from McKay that both players had "been more than threatened" by the Hibs manager, and told they would be dropped from the team - claims that were palpably untrue.

All of this has rather overshadowed the forthcoming month of wheeler-dealering, but here's a brief summary of what might happen over the next 31 days:

Celtic: Started the ball rolling by signing Steven Pressley on an 18-month contract on Friday, unlikely to do a huge amount of business beyond this. They need a long-term replacement for Neil Lennon, but Gordon Strachan has stated a preference for waiting until the summer.