Marked for Leander Bjerke
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market26 Jul 2032
“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 The request is on a desk at AFC Wimbledon, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad26 Jul 2032
Marcus Browne 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.
Squad26 Jul 2032
Jamie Donley 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.
Squad26 Jul 2032
At 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Squad26 Jul 2032
8 new faces, and AFC Wimbledon are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Boardroom26 Jul 2032
90% of the income goes out in wages at AFC Wimbledon
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Boardroom26 Jul 2032
The numbers do not look good at AFC Wimbledon
Wages have outrun income and the accountants have started attending meetings they used to send apologies to. Ambition comes second in a season like this.
The dugout26 Jul 2032
Axel Benites 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.
The dugout26 Jul 2032
Alex Morales has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at AFC Wimbledon 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market12 Jul 2032
Jamie Donley has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AFC Wimbledon they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad12 Jul 2032
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AFC Wimbledon this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Jul 2032
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Leander Bjerke is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Jul 2032
Samad Elaji arrives at the club he grew up with
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Samad Elaji has, at AFC Wimbledon, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Squad12 Jul 2032
At 25 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
The dugout12 Jul 2032
“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 dugout12 Jul 2032
Osman Foyo 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 Osman Foyo trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market12 Jul 2032
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Isaac Ogundere’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Market12 Jul 2032
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market19 Jan 2032
Only the photograph left for Jamie Donley
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jamie Donley will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AFC Wimbledon the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Market19 Jan 2032
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Accrington Stanley waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AFC Wimbledon is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market19 Jan 2032
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Sam Waller had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Transfer targets19 Jan 2032
No deal for Terry Devlin at that price
AFC Wimbledon offered $2.5M; Swindon Town 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.
Market19 Jan 2032
“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.
Squad19 Jan 2032
Mason Melia and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets19 Jan 2032
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.
Squad19 Jan 2032
Leander Bjerke gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Leander Bjerke has just signed for AFC Wimbledon, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad19 Jan 2032
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jamie Donley was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.