Marked for Adam Richardson
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
The scrutiny sharpens at Castellón
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Castellón is running low.
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Nobody could get near Awer Mabil
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market4 Jan 2027
Getafe come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Castellón did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market4 Jan 2027
“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 The request is on a desk at Castellón, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Jérémy Mellot 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.
Squad4 Jan 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Romain Matthys, and the manager let it.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Words at Castellón training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tomás Mejías is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
Marked 8.03 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 Dec 2026
Diego Barri in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Castellón this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Adam Richardson is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Words at Castellón training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jérémy Mellot is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
Nobody could get near Awer Mabil
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings21 Dec 2026
A mark of 7.31, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Oct 2026
A fracture rules Adam Jakobsen out for 70 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Castellón will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Nobody could get near Awer Mabil
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Diego Barri 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Adam Richardson is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Jérémy Mellot 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
147% of the income goes out in wages at Castellón
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.