A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Pardubice will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Add another name to the list: Jihlava have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Arouna Ouattara. The answer from Pardubice has not changed — yet.
The offer went to Slavia Prague this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Michal Hlavatý 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 offer went to Karviná this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Pardubice offered $110.0K; Prostějov said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Michal Hlavatý 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Adam Vodička is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad20 Mar 2028
Words at Pardubice training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. William Feola 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Pardubice has been clear about where Michal Hubínek stands, which is more than many ever get.
Nobody at Pardubice 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.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of William Feola
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.
9 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.
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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Jakub Jakubko trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Pardubice. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Successful dribbles: 23. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Lawrence Nicholas 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.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Adam Vodička is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Feb 2028
Words at Pardubice training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michal Hlavatý 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.
It finished 1‑0, and it was Michal Hlavatý’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Pardubice.
Player ratings21 Feb 2028
Michal Hlavatý was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.27. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Vladimir Cerny on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
He found out with everybody else, an hour before kick-off, from a sheet of paper on a wall. Nobody at Pardubice pretended it was anything other than a decision about him.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Richie Musaba
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Pardubice heard it as anything else.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Aleš Mandous was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The young player of the month award goes to a 19-year-old at Pardubice who has looked like the finished article for four weekends running. The next four are the ones that decide whether he is.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Pardubice, another week without a signature from Aleš Mandous.
Aleš Mandous 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.
Squad1 Nov 2027
Words at Pardubice training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michal Hlavatý 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Pardubice, another week without a signature from Aleš Mandous.
“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.
Something was said to Jakub Jakubko and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
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.
In brief
The dugoutAleš Mandous knocks on the manager’s door
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.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Ladislav Krobot had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Pardubice can pretend not to have heard.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Adam Vodička is living that version at Pardubice, and it tends to show in the first month.
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.
Pardubice have made the call to Ludogorets. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
Pardubice have made the call to Olympiacos. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.