Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Norwich City will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Joe Whitworth will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Norwich City the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Norwich City people have started saying his name in the past tense.
$4.2M on the table at Middlesbrough. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Norwich City can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Norwich City have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The offer went to Crystal Palace this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Harry Grimshaw has, at Norwich City, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
In brief
SquadWords at Norwich City training over how hard people work
Everything agreed with Plymouth Argyle, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Oldham Athletic had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Chelsea, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Leo McCormick 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.
At 33, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
Oldham Athletic asked and Everton said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Marcus Søberg 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $28.3M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Brighton keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oldham Athletic this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Crystal Palace have kept their man, and Oldham Athletic go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Squad23 Jul 2035
Olivér Kalmár 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Oldham Athletic can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aymane Jelbat 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.
Vladimir Kostic 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
The club is not barred from spending; it simply has nothing to spend that it has not first raised. Every name linked with Oldham Athletic this window arrives with a name leaving in the same sentence.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Thiago Domínguez trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The dugout9 Jul 2035
Stephen White is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oldham Athletic this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Franco Malagueño signs something — a contract at Oldham Athletic or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dragos Ratiu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Oldham Athletic. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
5 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Oldham Athletic could ask drops and the wages Vane Jovanov can ask rise.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Oldham Athletic is running low.
Squad21 May 2035
Olivér Kalmár 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 was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oldham Athletic this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Leo McCormick signs something — a contract at Oldham Athletic or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Dragos Ratiu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Olivér Kalmár 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 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Oldham Athletic know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Oldham Athletic will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Kemuel Edouard-Marrison and Oldham Athletic agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Leo McCormick 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 borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Oldham Athletic, another week without a signature from Dynaeo Martin-Moore.
The dugout9 Apr 2035
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Interim Coach left the room before anybody could ask which.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Olivér Kalmár trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Oldham Athletic will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Laolu Omobolaji provided it, and the 8.07 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Franco Malagueño 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.
7 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Oldham Athletic told Laolu Omobolaji something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mark Carter trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Franco Malagueño signs something — a contract at Oldham Athletic or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Chesterfield next, and one man in the Oldham Athletic dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
6 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Oldham Athletic could ask drops and the wages Leo McCormick can ask rise.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Harry Grimshaw has written the date down.
Leo McCormick 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Olivér Kalmár was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad16 Oct 2034
7 new faces, and Oldham Athletic 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Oldham Athletic told Aymane Jelbat something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at Oldham Athletic has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.