Marked for Hlib Nalyvaiko
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad30 Dec 2030
Valerii Voskonyan damages knee ligaments — 46 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 46 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.
Match28 Dec 2030
Poltava make it 8 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now Poltava have 8 straight wins of it.
Squad30 Dec 2030
Francisco is in the form of his life
A season average of 7.61 with 19 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
The dugout30 Dec 2030
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad30 Dec 2030
Words at Poltava training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Shola Ogundana 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.
Match28 Dec 2030
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Shola Ogundana. 1‑0 against Probiy, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings30 Dec 2030
Shola Ogundana was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.39. 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.
Looking ahead30 Dec 2030
Top-of-the-table clash for Poltava
Vorskla next, and the two sides the division is watching meet each other. Whoever wins will be told nothing is decided in the same breath as being congratulated.
Squad30 Dec 2030
Hlib Nalyvaiko 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad11 Nov 2030
Valerii Voskonyan damages knee ligaments — 98 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 98 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.
Squad11 Nov 2030
A season average of 7.73 with 24 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Match9 Nov 2030
5‑1, and Bohdan Kobzar took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Poltava tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings11 Nov 2030
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 9.97, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings11 Nov 2030
Two goals and a mark of 8.49 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Market11 Nov 2030
“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.
Player ratings11 Nov 2030
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.99 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match9 Nov 2030
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Poltava and Prykarpattia in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Squad11 Nov 2030
Shola Ogundana 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.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad9 Sep 2030
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ivan Tymoschuk
31 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Poltava lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match7 Sep 2030
Podillia will want this one forgotten quickly: 4‑1, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Poltava were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Squad9 Sep 2030
Francisco takes the match ball home
3 goals in one afternoon from one man. The other players were also present, a witness confirmed.
Market9 Sep 2030
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Poltava have lost him in all but the paperwork.
Market9 Sep 2030
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Poltava can pretend not to have heard.
Market9 Sep 2030
The Zorya deal is off
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Bohdan Kyrykovych reports back to Poltava with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Match7 Sep 2030
Poltava make home a hard place to visit
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The dugout9 Sep 2030
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Boardroom9 Sep 2030
Deadline passes with 17 signed and 11 gone
That is the business done at Poltava until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
The paperwork begins on Max Hudson
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Poltava have done the hard part with Club Brugge, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Squad22 Jul 2030
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Poltava this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad22 Jul 2030
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 17 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.
Squad22 Jul 2030
Hlib Nalyvaiko gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Hlib Nalyvaiko has just signed for Poltava, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad22 Jul 2030
A row about effort at Poltava
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Shola Ogundana was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Market22 Jul 2030
Zorya are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Poltava will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
The dugout22 Jul 2030
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Stanislav Mihutskyi, and the manager let it.
Market22 Jul 2030
The Jordan question follows Poltava around
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Jordan’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.