It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Siah Jamegan will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Ehsan Dejagah 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.
Squad1 Jan 2029
Words at Siah Jamegan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dixon Vera 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Siah Jamegan, another week without a signature from Ehsan Dejagah.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 24 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad25 Dec 2028
Words at Siah Jamegan training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dixon Vera 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.
Saeid Ebrahimi 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.
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 Kaveh Jahanbakhsh is on it.
36 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Siah Jamegan will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 8 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Siah Jamegan will quote 17 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Siah Jamegan told Xurshid G'iyosov something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Siah Jamegan will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dixon Vera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Amir Hossein Reyvandi 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.
The dugout11 Dec 2028
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Masoud Taremi to a room that had heard them before.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
34 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 chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 11 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
The terraces4 Dec 2028
Supporters organise against the Siah Jamegan board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Position 16 and 6 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 46 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dixon Vera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Saeid Ebrahimi 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.
Half the programme played, position 16, 6 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.