18 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Crewe Alexandra lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Crewe Alexandra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad24 May 2027
Tatsuki Seko 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Crewe Alexandra, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The words a physio says slowly. 27 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and David Valero was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Wesley Okoduwa signs something — a contract at Crewe Alexandra or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
In brief
The dugoutMatúš Holíček knocks on the manager's door
34 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Crewe Alexandra lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Crewe Alexandra are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Darragh Lenihan 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. David Valero 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.
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 Kaide Gordon is on it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Crewe Alexandra. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Calum Agius trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The words a physio says slowly. 41 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.
Successful dribbles: 32. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
The last league game has been played and the table has stopped moving: 56 points. The summer begins on Monday, and so does the argument about what it all meant.
Darragh Lenihan 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Tatsuki Seko 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.
At 22 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.