Marked for Jayden Luker
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match17 Oct 2026
4 matches without a win for Yenisey
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Yenisey are no longer polite ones.
Squad19 Oct 2026
At 20 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Vladis Emmersón 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
A falling-out at Yenisey
Mehdi Bounou and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
“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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 38 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Yenisey is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
The dugout19 Oct 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.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Ruslan Zimnin chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
Ninety specific minutes wanted a different sort of player, and the manager picked one. He is not out of form and he is not in the side, and both are true.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match30 Sep 2026
The small margins put Yenisey out
Out, 0‑1 to Dinamo Vladivostok, and the long argument about which of the small moments decided it. The league is all there is now, and everybody knows it.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 29. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout5 Oct 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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.27 for the rest of it.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Iván Pérez 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
A row about effort at Yenisey
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vladis Emmersón was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 291% of everything Yenisey earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Nobody left the Yenisey dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad21 Sep 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 Yenisey this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The terraces21 Sep 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Jayden Luker has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Yegor Ivanov beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 19. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andrey Mazurin, and the manager let it.
Match19 Sep 2026
It finished 1‑0, and it was Alexandr Lomakin’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Yenisey.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Nikita Bogatyrev 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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.73 on the card, and the Yenisey support went home talking about one name.
The dugout21 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Ruslan Zimnin, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
A defender's afternoon for Artem Pogosov
Defensive actions: 15. He was first to everything and second to nothing, and the goalkeeper had an easy day because of it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market7 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 Yenisey, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Yenisey had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at River Plate, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A row about effort at Yenisey
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Vladis Emmersón was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Yenisey asked and Shafa said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Mehdi Bounou 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
David Kokoev slips down the pecking order
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. David Kokoev is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Squad7 Sep 2026
No place for Jayden Luker in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Yenisey are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Olympiacos have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Deportivo Riestra have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.