Marked for Viktor Sotnikov
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad23 Nov 2026
Egor Maslyanskiy damages knee ligaments — 20 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 20 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad23 Nov 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Market23 Nov 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Gomel they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad9 Nov 2026
Egor Maslyanskiy damages knee ligaments — 36 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 36 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market9 Nov 2026
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Kirill Leonovich will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Gomel the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad9 Nov 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Daniil Silinskiy and Gomel agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Tempers go at Gomel
Leandro Cañete 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.
Market9 Nov 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Gomel, another week without a signature from Daniil Silinskiy.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Igor Zayats falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad26 Oct 2026
Stanislav Kleschuk damages knee ligaments — 29 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 29 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market26 Oct 2026
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Viktor Sotnikov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Gomel the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Gomel
Leandro Cañete 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Oct 2026
Stanislav Kleschuk damages knee ligaments — 45 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 45 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market12 Oct 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Gomel is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Artem Karatay is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Tempers go at Gomel
Leandro Cañete 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.
Boardroom12 Oct 2026
Slutsk will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Yaroslav Yarotskiy has pre-agreed a move to Gomel, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Loan watch12 Oct 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Gomel, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
74 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gomel lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market14 Sep 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Gomel is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
A defender's goal wins it for Gomel — 7.48
1 for Dmitriy Lisakovich, marked 7.48, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Market14 Sep 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Gomel, and it is not being withdrawn.
Boardroom14 Sep 2026
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Viktor Sotnikov has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Gomel
Leandro Cañete 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.
Market14 Sep 2026
The deal that would have taken Oleg Kovalev to Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Gomel with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Boardroom14 Sep 2026
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Match12 Sep 2026
Isloch made Gomel work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 Aug 2026
99 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gomel lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match19 Aug 2026
The small margins put Gomel out
Out, 0‑1 to Arsenal Dzerzhinsk, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Market24 Aug 2026
BATE come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Gomel did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market24 Aug 2026
Anton Semenov hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Gomel can pretend not to have heard.
Match22 Aug 2026
No end in sight to Gomel's wait for a win
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Gomel has to find a result from somewhere.
Boardroom24 Aug 2026
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Igor Zayats has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Squad24 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gomel this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Boardroom24 Aug 2026
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
The terraces24 Aug 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.