No, not cynical...but standing back a little.....
Must say it does seem a tad bizarre for our/any club to deliberately put out a 'failure' message as a forum leak such as Guan has just done, onto a forum that at best likely has 3% of a St Mary's worth of supporters looking at it. Same applies to positive leaks too. Audience is too small to justify it?
Not only is it 'bad press' but, if accurate/correct, it just gives way too much information to other clubs who would likely think "ahh, when SFC come a-calling for [playersname] add on a few mill, they'll be desperate". It was even a 'secret' approach so why publicise it?
Now, rather than just an exercise in feeding us suicidal sheep on SWF a few data-slops to slay our hunger for any news, if it is more a case of disinformation (but who knows for what purpose) then that would seem more credible and our ITKers then become mere SFC tools (in the nicest way) and players in the game.
Still don't see why we'd leak an actual fail......
...unless it's a smoke screen......?