Marked for Jack Dallimore
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad25 Jan 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alexander Gorgon
116 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. SV Ried lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match25 Jan 2027
SV Ried sink to position 9
13 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market25 Jan 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what SV Ried can pretend not to have heard.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Stefan Hierländer 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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Words at SV Ried training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Yusuf Maart 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.
Squad25 Jan 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Steve De Ridder, and the manager let it.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad18 Jan 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Alexander Gorgon
123 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. SV Ried lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad18 Jan 2027
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” SV Ried may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad18 Jan 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Oliver Steurer and SV Ried agree another 2 years.
Squad18 Jan 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SV Ried this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market18 Jan 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Felix Wimmer has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at SV Ried.
Market18 Jan 2027
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market4 Jan 2027
Burnley come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Bolton Wanderers did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Match2 Jan 2027
No end in sight to Bolton Wanderers's wait for a win
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Bolton Wanderers has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad4 Jan 2027
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Bolton Wanderers have had the benefit of it.
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 Bolton Wanderers, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad4 Jan 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bolton Wanderers this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad4 Jan 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jack Dallimore is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad4 Jan 2027
At 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Loan watch4 Jan 2027
“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 Bolton Wanderers, and 1 appearances in 21 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings4 Jan 2027
7.66, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Bolton Wanderers had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.