It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Tula this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Arsenal Tula training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Artem Popov 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.
A brace, and Ivan Ignatjev takes the afternoon — 8.79
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ivan Ignatjev provided it, and the 8.79 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
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.
Reziuan Mirzov 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.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.