A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Zarya Lugansk will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“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 The request is on a desk at Zarya Lugansk, and it is not being withdrawn.
9 matches without a win, and then this, against Dinamo Makhachkala 2. Relief is a strange noise in a football ground and it was the only noise at the end.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad22 Apr 2030
Leonardo Cá 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.
The dugout22 Apr 2030
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Arseny Bulgakov, on a 2‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Beaten 0‑3 by Nart, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
Squad10 Dec 2029
Words at Zarya Lugansk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Faruk Bezdrob 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.
Anton Brems 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 embargo bars a fee being paid for a player, whatever the manager thinks the squad needs. Every rumour printed about this club between now and its lifting is a rumour about a deal that cannot happen.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Arseny Bulgakov after 0‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Danil Kazantsev is on it.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Vladislav Konokotin scored, was marked 7.61, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The gap in the accounts was filled from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be grateful and to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings arrive together.
Squad3 Dec 2029
Words at Zarya Lugansk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Faruk Bezdrob 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zarya Lugansk this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mikhail Osinov is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 17 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 10 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Defending was optional and nobody took up the option. 12 goals between Yenisey 2 and Irkutsk, and not one of the people who paid to be there will ask for the money back.