“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Manchester City have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Gerónimo Rulli will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Manchester City the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dan Ndoye was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Manchester City can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Manchester City have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Martin Ødegaard was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Manchester City heard it as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Joško Gvardiol was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
8.47. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Manchester City, another week without a signature from Calvin Bassey.
The fixture the calendar is arranged around. Form goes out of the window, the table is not consulted, and for ninety minutes Manchester City will be judged on one thing only.
Successful dribbles: 32. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Manchester City is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Gerónimo Rulli has agreed terms with Tottenham for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 9 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
8.23. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
In brief
BoardroomNobody left the Manchester City dressing room in a hurry