Marked for Lucky Emmanuel
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market17 Aug 2026
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Kun Khalifat waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Shooting Stars is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market17 Aug 2026
Only the photograph left for Stephen Amos
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Stephen Amos will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Shooting Stars the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: DAC Dunajska Streda keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Stephen Amos has agreed terms with Rivers United for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad17 Aug 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 Shooting Stars this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match15 Aug 2026
Rangers International left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Muyiwa Balogun 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.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Peter Madu to a room that had heard them before.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market10 Aug 2026
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Shooting Stars have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Player ratings10 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market10 Aug 2026
Ghali Falke has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Shooting Stars they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Shooting Stars have done the hard part with DAC Dunajska Streda, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Boardroom10 Aug 2026
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Transfer targets10 Aug 2026
Shooting Stars asked and NK Celje said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Mustapha Lawal 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.
Market10 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Henry Adeleye is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Market10 Aug 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Isaac Onuachu is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad3 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Shooting Stars is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Boardroom3 Aug 2026
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kabiru Tijjani and Shooting Stars agree another 4 years.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Mustapha Lawal and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Shooting Stars training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Muyiwa Balogun 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 ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.