The offer from Bechem United for David Asamoah was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The deal with St. Gallen is done in every sense but the one that puts him on the pitch. Nothing goes wrong at this stage, except on the occasions when it does.
The name of Andre Baba has come up in conversations Liberty Professionals were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Liberty Professionals this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Position 5 on 52 points, and the places that carry a European ticket are close enough to count. Seasons like this are decided by two results in April, and the club knows which two.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Liberty Professionals. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Osman Asante will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Liberty Professionals the goodbyes have quietly begun.
4 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.
“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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Osman Asante has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Liberty Professionals have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Albert Bukari will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Liberty Professionals the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Marked 7.98. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
David Asamoah 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.
At 18 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrew Afful was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings27 Sep 2027
Nana Kudus was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.15. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Daniel Asante and Liberty Professionals agree another 3 years.