“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” SJK have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SJK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Simon Johansson was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
15 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager plants his flag on Markus Arsalo
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 31 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at SJK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason SJK will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simon Johansson 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.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at SJK has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. SJK know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
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.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at SJK, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A mark of 7.87 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at SJK is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at SJK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rashid Abubakar 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Jeremiah Streng provided it, and the 9.24 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
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 7.75 for the rest of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Simon Johansson 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.
123 minutes played. Jeremiah Streng found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and KTP went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Two goals and a mark of 8.37 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Marked 7.95 at 21, in a side that makes no allowances for age. He did not need any, and he looked the least nervous man on the pitch.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Deadline passes with 20 signed and 1 gone
That is the business done at SJK until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
SJK had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at FH, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
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.
In brief
Player ratingsAniis Machaal beats them one at a time