Marked for Yaroslav Mikhaylov
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Match24 Jul 2027
Shakhter Donetsk will want this one forgotten quickly: 5‑1, every duel lost, and a long ride home. Neftyanik were ruthless in the way good sides are ruthless.
Market26 Jul 2027
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Neftyanik people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Squad26 Jul 2027
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Match24 Jul 2027
Neftyanik make home a hard place to visit
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The dugout26 Jul 2027
This is not rotation. Timur Yakovlev has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Neftyanik is pretending otherwise.
Market26 Jul 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market26 Jul 2027
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Yaroslav Mikhaylov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Neftyanik the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets26 Jul 2027
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Neftyanik have done the hard part with Sibir, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Player ratings26 Jul 2027
Andrey Abramov scored one and made one — 7.63
Two of the goals had his name somewhere on them, which is the afternoon a manager wants from anybody asked to both create and finish. 7.63, and 2 involvements.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market12 Apr 2027
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Neftyanik is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Match10 Apr 2027
The wait goes on for Neftyanik
5 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.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Aleksandr Gorbachev and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad12 Apr 2027
A row about effort at Neftyanik
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Johandrys Herrera was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Loan watch12 Apr 2027
The goals keep arriving from Yuri Anisimov’s exile
14 goals in 31 games at Kyzyltash — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Neftyanik updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
The team sheet said everything about Yegor Kostryukhin
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 Yegor Kostryukhin.
Squad12 Apr 2027
Defences have started doubling up on Savely Gerasimov
5 goals and a season average of 7.20 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Boardroom12 Apr 2027
The accounts are being read more closely than the results. Wages before ambition is the order of business now, and the manager has been told so.
The dugout12 Apr 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Ilya Abdulov chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market12 Oct 2026
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Neftyanik is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Aleksandr Gorbachev 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Yury Kudrevaty 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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 35, 3 points below where he was, and a body that has started charging interest. It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph on this page.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market12 Oct 2026
Neftyanik bring in an old head
Johandrys Herrera is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Yegor Kostryukhin trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Market12 Oct 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Market12 Oct 2026
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Timofey Nikiforov signs something — a contract at Neftyanik or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market14 Sep 2026
Only the photograph left for Fyodor Smirnov
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Fyodor Smirnov will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Neftyanik the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Boardroom14 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 4 signed and 7 gone
That is the business done at Neftyanik until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Market14 Sep 2026
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Yaroslav Mikhaylov reports back to Neftyanik with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at Neftyanik training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Timur Yakovlev 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.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Ilya Abdulov after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 12. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match12 Sep 2026
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Dinamo Makhachkala 2 defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Market14 Sep 2026
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Timofey Nikiforov signs something — a contract at Neftyanik or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
The dugout14 Sep 2026
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Tyumen waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Neftyanik is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Vadim Anisimov and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Yury Kudrevaty pulls a muscle — 14 days out
The injury that keeps coming back, keeps being rushed back from, and quietly costs more careers than the dramatic ones. 14 days is the estimate; the honest figure depends on whether anybody is patient.
Market7 Sep 2026
The name of Yaroslav Mikhaylov has come up in conversations Neftyanik were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A row about effort at Neftyanik
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Timur Yakovlev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Somebody has moved past him. It is not a dropping and it is worse than one, because a dropping is about a Saturday and this is about where he stands.
Market7 Sep 2026
Neftyanik have made Vadim Anisimov available for transfer. A career at this club is over in all but paperwork.
Market7 Sep 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Neftyanik, another week without a signature from Yegor Kostryukhin.
Looking ahead7 Sep 2026
Next up on the road: Dinamo Makhachkala 2, position 15. The supporters who go will talk about it all week and the ones who do not will check their phones at ten to five.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Aug 2026
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Neftyanik can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 22. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words exchanged at Neftyanik
Aleksandr Gorbachev 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.
Market3 Aug 2026
The name of Gavriil Nazarov has come up in conversations Neftyanik were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Neftyanik training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Timur Yakovlev 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.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
A loan enquiry to Salyut: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout3 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Ilya Abdulov was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Neftyanik dressing room was either.