Marked for Bernard Nguene
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match17 Oct 2026
Dender will want this one forgotten quickly: 3‑0, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Standard Liege were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Squad19 Oct 2026
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.64 at 40, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Match19 Oct 2026
Position 3 and 17 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Match17 Oct 2026
Nobody wants to play Standard Liege right now
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Mohammed El Hankouri 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
47 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Player ratings19 Oct 2026
Tobias Mohr was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.00. 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.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Timothé Nkada 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad12 Oct 2026
Anthony Modeste 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 40 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Standard Liege is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
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.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
Market12 Oct 2026
The name of Ibe Hautekiet keeps appearing in other people's back pages. Standard Liege say nothing, which says plenty.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Bernard Nguene knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Bernard Nguene trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match26 Aug 2026
A 1‑0 win over Lierse, a place in the next round, and the quiet arithmetic every supporter does on the walk home: how many more until a final?
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Charleroi have kept their man, and Standard Liege go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
$1.2M was the most the club would pay and RWDM were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Mohammed El Hankouri 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 dugout31 Aug 2026
“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.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Gustav Mortensen has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match29 Aug 2026
0‑1 to Westerlo, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Boardroom31 Aug 2026
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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
No place for Bruno Godeau in the new shape
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Standard Liege are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.