Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Abbosbek Fayzullayev will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Maccabi Tel Aviv the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Jonas Urbig and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad19 Nov 2035
Abdul Fatawu 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Maccabi Tel Aviv can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
Nobody at Maccabi Tel Aviv will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Maccabi Tel Aviv people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Maccabi Tel Aviv hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Josh Landers has, at Maccabi Tel Aviv, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Christ Inao Oulaï 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Abdul Fatawu 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.
The new man at Maccabi Tel Aviv has worked with Christ Inao Oulaï before and it went well. He arrives with a view of the player already formed, which is worth more than any pre-season.
114 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Newcastle United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Luton Town waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Newcastle United is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Giorgio Scalvini 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Josh Landers will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Newcastle United the goodbyes have quietly begun.
142 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Newcastle United lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Newcastle United can pretend not to have heard.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Newcastle United have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The offer from Huddersfield Town for Alasana Yirajang was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Tyrique George 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Newcastle United know it.
The words a physio says slowly. 149 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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and West Ham United waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Newcastle United is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Newcastle United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Javier Rojas will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Newcastle United the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The approach has been made to Cobreloa and the answer is somebody else's to give. These things are settled in private and reported in public, usually in that order.
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.
12 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The offer from Wolverhampton for Kaine Kesler Hayden was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Fulham waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Newcastle United is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $5.8M of what Newcastle United paid for Manfred Ugalde is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Newcastle United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
$850.0K on the table at Aston Villa. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
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.
Every dressing room knows how to read a signing like this one. Justin Obikwu is not here to sit and wait indefinitely, and the man whose place he has been bought to take knows it better than anyone.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Newcastle United 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 Newcastle United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Newcastle United can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
18 appearances and 10 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Charlie Tasker was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad29 May 2034
11 new faces, and Newcastle United are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.