The words a physio says slowly. 16 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.
1‑4 to Peterborough United, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
22 goals and a season average of 7.30 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Squad27 May 2030
Words at Wigan Athletic training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giovanni Leoni 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.
The goal that put Peterborough United ahead was still being replayed on the concourse when Wigan Athletic equalised, 1 minutes later. Leads are only worth what you do with them.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 13 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The words a physio says slowly. 23 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.
Two goals and a mark of 9.32 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Wigan Athletic can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Wigan Athletic 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 Giovanni Leoni was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
30 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Wigan Athletic lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Rio Ngumoha has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
In brief
Player ratingsFraser Murray was on a different afternoon to everybody else
An average of 7.29 in a first team he is several years too young for. Wigan Athletic have something, and by now the whole division has noticed.
Match12 Jan 2030
Another one collected away from home
5 on the bounce on the road for Wigan Athletic. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Fraser Murray 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Dara Costelloe. 3‑2 against Bradford City, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.