A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. FC Lahti will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
FC Lahti asked and Mlada Boleslav said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation FC Lahti are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against SJK in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Jonathan Mensah had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
“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 The request is on a desk at Liberty Professionals, and it is not being withdrawn.
Andrew Bukari 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Hearts of Oak have kept their man, and Liberty Professionals go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kamaldeen Owusu 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 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 Andrew Bukari is on it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Liberty Professionals, and both men came out saying it was fine.
8 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.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Liberty Professionals they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Carlos Ohene 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.
Kamaldeen Owusu 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.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Timothy Atamenwan.
In brief
The dugoutKwadwo Ayew has become a man the manager trusts
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Andre Paintsil
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Liberty Professionals they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sa'ad Tijjani 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 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 Kwadwo Ayew is on it.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Liberty Professionals told Maxwell Azafokpe something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
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 Steven Nufour has written the date down.
Next up on the road: Great Olympics, position 11. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
Two goals and a mark of 8.58 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“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 Liberty Professionals, and it is not being withdrawn.
Successful dribbles: 26. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Liberty Professionals may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 4 arrived, 1 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Ernest Ofori will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Liberty Professionals the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Carlos Ohene was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.