Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Bechem United waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Hasaacas is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Jonathan Mohammed will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hasaacas the goodbyes have quietly begun.
At 23 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
At 30 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Hasaacas will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
In brief
The dugoutDavid Waris has become a man the manager trusts
The offer from Asante Kotoko for Jonathan Mohammed 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mohammed Mensah will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Hasaacas the goodbyes have quietly begun.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hasaacas this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 28 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Hasaacas will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Nobody at Hasaacas will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
In brief
The dugoutDavid Waris knocks on the manager's door
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Hasaacas people have started saying his name in the past tense.
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Berekum Chelsea have kept their man, and Hasaacas go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kwadwo Nuhu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Kofi Asante 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.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Heart of Lions will make the call about Afriyie Atiemo this week. Hasaacas have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
BA All Stars have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
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 Felix Appiah is on it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Hasaacas, and it is not being withdrawn.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
Nobody at Hasaacas will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Hasaacas know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.