Marked for Scott Bailey
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Aug 2028
19 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Khazar lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad21 Aug 2028
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Market21 Aug 2028
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Khazar people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market21 Aug 2028
Alashkert come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Khazar did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad21 Aug 2028
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
A performance of 10.00 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Successful dribbles: 21. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Transfer targets21 Aug 2028
Khazar asked and Gabala said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Jul 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mahir Abdullayev
41 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Khazar lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market31 Jul 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Khazar, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets31 Jul 2028
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Fiorentina keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad31 Jul 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Harry Hogg is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad31 Jul 2028
A muscle injury and 14 days out for Nicolás Servetto
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Khazar will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
Squad31 Jul 2028
At 33 the improving is meant to be over, and it is not: 3 points better than a year ago. It happens to the ones who take the boring parts seriously.
Transfer targets31 Jul 2028
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. AS Roma have kept their man, and Khazar go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market31 Jul 2028
Both sides expect a conversation in the coming days. Khazar will name a price, and everything after that is arithmetic.
Boardroom31 Jul 2028
100% of the income goes out in wages at Khazar
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Jul 2028
Renat Sadygov damages knee ligaments — 66 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 66 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.
Market24 Jul 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad24 Jul 2028
Words exchanged at Khazar
Ruslan Bayramov and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad24 Jul 2028
At 22 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad24 Jul 2028
At 35 the improving is meant to be over, and it is not: 3 points better than a year ago. It happens to the ones who take the boring parts seriously.
Transfer targets24 Jul 2028
Khazar asked and Torres said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Transfer targets24 Jul 2028
A loan enquiry to Fiorentina: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout24 Jul 2028
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The dugout24 Jul 2028
Cavid Madatov asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market31 Jan 2028
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Ruslan Huseynov had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Qarabag keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Transfer targets31 Jan 2028
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Khazar have done the hard part with Austria Wien, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Louis Thompson 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Tempers go at Khazar
Agil Abdullayev 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Scott Bailey and Khazar agree another 4 years.
The dugout31 Jan 2028
Murat Tasci asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
The dugout31 Jan 2028
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Ruslan Bayramov is on it.
The dugout31 Jan 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Salim Hashimov, and the manager let it.