Marked for Vladislav Pulkach
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces17 Sep 2040
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match15 Sep 2040
11 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad17 Sep 2040
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 59 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad17 Sep 2040
Maxim Azarko 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.
Player ratings17 Sep 2040
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.85 on the card, and the Arsenal Dzerzhinsk support went home talking about one name.
Match15 Sep 2040
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match1 Sep 2040
9 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Match1 Sep 2040
8 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Squad3 Sep 2040
Daniel Volskiy 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.
Squad3 Sep 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Alexandr Averkin and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 2 years.
Match1 Sep 2040
1‑2 to Minsk, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad3 Sep 2040
The medical room confirms 26 days on the sidelines for Egor Volodko, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Player ratings3 Sep 2040
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Sep 2040
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.
Market3 Sep 2040
The Maxim Azarko talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces20 Aug 2040
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match18 Aug 2040
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings20 Aug 2040
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.28 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad20 Aug 2040
Egor Volodko: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Arsenal Dzerzhinsk have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match18 Aug 2040
6 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad20 Aug 2040
Vladislav Pulkach 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.
Match18 Aug 2040
No time for Ostrovets to settle
The goal that put Ostrovets ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when Arsenal Dzerzhinsk equalised, 1 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
Match18 Aug 2040
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad20 Aug 2040
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match30 Jul 2040
14 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad30 Jul 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom30 Jul 2040
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk is running low.
Player ratings30 Jul 2040
Age has not caught Henry King yet — 8.22
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.22 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match28 Jul 2040
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad30 Jul 2040
Maxim Azarko 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.
Match28 Jul 2040
Henry King scored, and precious little else went right: 2‑3 to Baranovichi, and a quiet walk to the dressing room.
Squad30 Jul 2040
31 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Player ratings30 Jul 2040
Marked 8.14 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match2 Jul 2040
13 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad2 Jul 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings2 Jul 2040
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.
Squad2 Jul 2040
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Boardroom2 Jul 2040
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk is running low.
Squad2 Jul 2040
Vladislav Pulkach 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.
Squad2 Jul 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Dmitriy Lutik and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 2 years.
Player ratings2 Jul 2040
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match4 Jun 2040
10 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad4 Jun 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad4 Jun 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Vladislav Pulkach and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 2 years.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad21 May 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad21 May 2040
Maxim Azarko 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.
Match19 May 2040
Minsk made Arsenal Dzerzhinsk work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings21 May 2040
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 17 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Player ratings21 May 2040
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.73 on the card, and the Arsenal Dzerzhinsk support went home talking about one name.
Squad21 May 2040
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.
Player ratings21 May 2040
The chances came and went for Jacob Harvey
9 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Market21 May 2040
The Jacob Harvey talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 May 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad14 May 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad14 May 2040
The manager makes an example of Jacob Harvey
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings14 May 2040
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad14 May 2040
Daniel Volskiy has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad7 May 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Match7 May 2040
Position 14, 7 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Player ratings7 May 2040
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.81 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad7 May 2040
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Andemir Goguzokov and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 2 years.
Squad7 May 2040
Maxim Azarko 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 May 2040
The medical room confirms 27 days on the sidelines for Mikita Dragun, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Player ratings7 May 2040
Defensive actions: 15, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Boardroom7 May 2040
Commercial news is the news nobody sings about and everything else is paid for with. The board will call it a partnership; the accountants will call it the difference between this squad and a smaller one.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad16 Apr 2040
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad16 Apr 2040
Maxim Azarko in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match14 Apr 2040
1‑3 to Baranovichi, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings16 Apr 2040
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings16 Apr 2040
Henry King will replay that one
1 error, one goal, and a night in front of the same three seconds. He will see it tonight, tomorrow and probably in February, and everybody who has played knows exactly which frame he keeps stopping on.
Squad16 Apr 2040
Jacob Harvey has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk 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.
Squad16 Apr 2040
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Player ratings16 Apr 2040
The pass was always on for Jacob Harvey
Chances created: 9. Somebody has to open a door before anybody can walk through it, and he spent the afternoon opening doors.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match24 Mar 2040
9 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has to find a result from somewhere.
Match24 Mar 2040
Beaten 0‑3 by Slutsk, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
Player ratings26 Mar 2040
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match24 Mar 2040
5 games now with at least two against. The back line has been rearranged, the goalkeeper has been backed publicly, and the goals keep going in anyway.
Squad26 Mar 2040
Vladislav Pulkach 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.
Boardroom26 Mar 2040
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
Squad26 Mar 2040
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad26 Mar 2040
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.
Market26 Mar 2040
The Jacob Harvey talk will not go away
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces5 Mar 2040
The mood at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Boardroom5 Mar 2040
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Andrei Gordeichuk has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Match3 Mar 2040
3 in front and in complete control, and it finished with BATE the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will enjoy reviewing.
Boardroom5 Mar 2040
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Player ratings5 Mar 2040
A brace, and Vladislav Pulkach takes the afternoon — 8.49
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Vladislav Pulkach provided it, and the 8.49 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Match3 Mar 2040
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad5 Mar 2040
383 appearances across 14 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk know what they have.
Player ratings5 Mar 2040
Henry King, 34, rolls back the years — 8.26
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.26 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market5 Mar 2040
“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 Arsenal Dzerzhinsk, and it is not being withdrawn.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces6 Feb 2040
The mood at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Squad6 Feb 2040
441 appearances across 14 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Market6 Feb 2040
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad6 Feb 2040
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad6 Feb 2040
“The easiest signature of my career.” Alexandr Averkin and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad6 Feb 2040
Vadim Tkachenko has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad19 Dec 2039
Yahor Stasevich damages knee ligaments — 26 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 26 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.
Match19 Dec 2039
Position 13, 24 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad19 Dec 2039
A fracture rules Anton Dragun out for 40 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Dzerzhinsk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Sep 2039
Mikita Dragun damages knee ligaments — 37 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 37 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.
Match10 Sep 2039
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Arsenal Dzerzhinsk are no longer polite ones.
Squad12 Sep 2039
Stepan Melnikov 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.
Squad12 Sep 2039
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Sergey Sazonchik will call it something else in private.
Player ratings12 Sep 2039
Marked 7.83 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Arsenal Dzerzhinsk had the best player on the pitch.
Squad12 Sep 2039
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad29 Aug 2039
Mikita Dragun damages knee ligaments — 51 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 51 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.
Squad29 Aug 2039
“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.
Squad29 Aug 2039
Stepan Melnikov 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Aug 2039
Mikita Dragun damages knee ligaments — 79 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 79 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.
Player ratings1 Aug 2039
Successful dribbles: 29. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match30 Jul 2039
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Arsenal Dzerzhinsk are no longer polite ones.
Squad1 Aug 2039
Sergey Sazonchik 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.
Player ratings1 Aug 2039
Marked 7.92 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Arsenal Dzerzhinsk had the best player on the pitch.
Squad1 Aug 2039
“The easiest signature of my career.” Vadzim Kislyak and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad18 Jul 2039
Mikita Dragun damages knee ligaments — 93 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 93 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.
Squad18 Jul 2039
Stepan Melnikov 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.
Match16 Jul 2039
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad18 Jul 2039
“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.
Market18 Jul 2039
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Jacob Harvey’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom4 Jul 2039
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Boardroom4 Jul 2039
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Player ratings4 Jul 2039
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.30, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad4 Jul 2039
Sergey Sazonchik 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.
Match2 Jul 2039
A 3‑2 win over Uni-X Labs, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Squad4 Jul 2039
Maxim Azarko gets it from the manager
“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.
Player ratings4 Jul 2039
Ninety minutes of Vladislav Pulkach at his very best
Marked 8.06. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk.
Boardroom4 Jul 2039
6 arrivals, an average age nobody would call a squad, and a set of parents being shown around a building their sons will spend more time in than at home. The scouting has already happened; today is only the paperwork.
Squad4 Jul 2039
A place in the month's best eleven for Mikita Hleb
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Mikita Hleb has come out of that comparison in the side, and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
The terraces27 Jun 2039
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Match25 Jun 2039
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad27 Jun 2039
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings27 Jun 2039
Marked 7.66 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Arsenal Dzerzhinsk had the best player on the pitch.
Squad27 Jun 2039
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Match25 Jun 2039
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad23 May 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergey Sazonchik
38 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad23 May 2039
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Squad23 May 2039
Stepan Melnikov 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.
Squad23 May 2039
14 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Match21 May 2039
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Player ratings23 May 2039
Successful dribbles: 11. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad25 Apr 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergey Sazonchik
66 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad25 Apr 2039
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 38 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad25 Apr 2039
42 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad25 Apr 2039
Sergey Sazonchik 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.
The terraces25 Apr 2039
The spotlight tightens on Maxim Azarko
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad4 Apr 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergey Sazonchik
87 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Boardroom4 Apr 2039
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Andrei Gordeichuk has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
The terraces4 Apr 2039
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Boardroom4 Apr 2039
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad4 Apr 2039
365 appearances across 13 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Arsenal Dzerzhinsk know what they have.
Match2 Apr 2039
The run now stands at 5, and the questions being asked around Arsenal Dzerzhinsk are no longer polite ones.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad28 Mar 2039
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sergey Sazonchik
94 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Dzerzhinsk lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match26 Mar 2039
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Arsenal Dzerzhinsk has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad28 Mar 2039
The medical room confirms 70 days on the sidelines for Vadim Tkachenko, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Squad28 Mar 2039
Sergey Sazonchik 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.
Player ratings28 Mar 2039
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.