Position 18 and 11 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tarazona this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 19 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 36 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Tarazona is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Arne Sicker 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Everybody at Tarazona saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 34 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
15 new faces, and Tarazona 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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Arne Sicker and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at Tarazona training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Alejandro Gómez 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.
At 37, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
“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 Tarazona know it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Tarazona. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutMarc Trilles knocks on the manager's door
Tarazona close the window on a squad of their own making
25 in and 0 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tobías Villalba has just signed for Tarazona, and for once the answer mattered.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Tarazona this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Le Havre AC have kept their man, and Tarazona go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The demotion a club never announces and a dressing room always notices. Julián Delmás is further from the side than he was, and the reason will not be given until he asks.
Tobías Villalba is 20, and Tarazona have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Tarazona had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Le Havre AC, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Antonio Zarzana 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Tarazona will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Pro Vercelli 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.
6 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.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Thiago Azaf is living that version at Tarazona, and it tends to show in the first month.
Marc Trilles 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.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Francisco Carrasco has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Luis Núñez has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Héctor Marín has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ignacio Fuentes is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.