“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 The request is on a desk at Bolton Wanderers, and it is not being withdrawn.
Lamare Bogarde 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Akin Famewo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Liam Grimshaw arrives at Bolton Wanderers with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what San Lorenzo can pretend not to have heard.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around San Lorenzo they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at San Lorenzo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 The request is on a desk at San Lorenzo, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at San Lorenzo is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Gastón Hernández 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.
Add another name to the list: Chacarita Juniors have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Valentín Escalante. The answer from San Lorenzo has not changed — yet.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bolton Wanderers this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Shots: 4. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Lúkas Petersson 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.
Shots: 4. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at San Lorenzo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
2 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee San Lorenzo could ask drops and the wages Nahuel Barrios can ask rise.
9 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Bolton Wanderers has to find a result from somewhere.
Lamare Bogarde 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.
It needed Branco Salinardi to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Milton Keynes Dons, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
In brief
SquadJosh Sheehan asks for a word with the manager
“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 San Lorenzo, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at San Lorenzo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 Bolton Wanderers, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Bolton Wanderers 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 Bolton Wanderers this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
“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 Bolton Wanderers, and it is not being withdrawn.
Rotherham United pay $960.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Eoin Toal 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Amario Cozier-Duberry. 2‑1 against Reading, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.28 — 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.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Lúkas Petersson knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 26 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Gastón Hernández 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 crowd waited for a goal that never came. Estudiantes defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.