The words a physio says slowly. 94 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.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. Temperley have lost him in all but the paperwork.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Temperley can pretend not to have heard.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Temperley hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Temperley this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
“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 The request is on a desk at Temperley, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Temperley is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
11 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Temperley can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Alejandro Melo wants continental football; whether Temperley can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Temperley this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Luciano Nieto was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Add another name to the list: Vorskla have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Francisco Silva. The answer from Temperley has not changed — yet.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Temperley, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.