Warnock to quit as Palace boss...?

Some strange news release activity has taken place casting doubt over the future of Neil Warnock as Crystal Palace manager.

Yesterday, the following Tweet was sent from a Crystal Palace news Twitter account.

"Warnock confirms quit plans: Crystal Palace manager Neil Warnock has announced that he will retir.. ERROR"

Being a Palace supporter I frantically scanned the news to learn more of the timing of Neil Warnock's departure form the Eagles. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found nothing from any other news source.

Baffled as to why such an announcement could go unnoticed by the football media ('it's only Palace' was not a sufficient reason, I decided) I went back to the Tweet to check that I wasn't mistaken and I wasn't.

The interesting thing about it was the big 'ERROR' at the end which is where the web address to the story was supposed to be. This Twitter feed uses an application that periodically scans certain RSS feeds called Twitterfeed. Once it finds an updated RSS it cleverly puts it together as a tweet, adds the web address of the original story and sends it out. Anyone following that Twitter stream has it pop up on their own stream just like that, as Tommy Cooper would say.

The absence of the web address suggests that the story was originally published but removed shortly thereafter. By that time the RSS feed had already updated @crystalpalacefc's Twitter stream and would have picked up the updated feed as usual. The big difference was that the web page containing the story no longer existed, hence the big 'ERROR' instead.

So far, so mysterious. There is a rumour knocking about that Warnock will retire at the end of the season and it would appear that something was about to be published on this subject and for some reason was either removed or stopped at a very late stage followed by a retraction.

It may have been a genuine mistake based on a rumour. It may have been an angry phone call from the Palace Press Office. It may be nothing at all since we do not know the source of the original material. It may have come from a buck of part time bloggers who have put two and two together and got five.

However, professional hacks have gone with less so Some People Are On The Pitch are going to confidently, nay stridently state that we understand that Neil Warnock will retire as manager of Crystal Palace at the end of the season... of course we may have misunderstood.

...and for a news feed that always gives you the facts straight, follow @spaotp on Twitter to keep abreast of all the latest info from Some People Are On The Pitch.