Words at Inter Allies training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Evrard Zag 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 Inter Allies this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Inter Allies, and both men came out saying it was fine.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
1 for Salim Adams, marked 7.75, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Salim Adams 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Inter Allies, another week without a signature from Adewale Sapara.
Something was said to Adewale Sapara and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
It will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Maxwell Azafokpe and Inter Allies agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Inter Allies were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
There is a particular relief in a club addressing the thing its own crowd has been shouting about. Imamu Bala arrives for exactly that job, and now he has to do it.
Inter Allies have made the call to Hearts of Oak. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.