Marked for Scott Fletcher
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad28 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Scott Fletcher is 16, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad28 Aug 2028
Andrew Nabbout 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Nov 2027
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mathew Leckie
80 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Melbourne City lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match20 Nov 2027
Uche Moses wins it after the whistle should have gone
92 minutes played. Uche Moses found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Central Coast Mariners went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Matheus Rossetto 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.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Nathaniel Atkinson 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.
The terraces22 Nov 2027
At 15 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.
Match20 Nov 2027
A 1‑0 win over Central Coast Mariners, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Some games turn on a moment; this one turned on a man. 7.72 on the card, and the Melbourne City support went home talking about one name.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Awer Mabil has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Melbourne City 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.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Off the bench and decisive: Uche Moses
The substitution nobody applauded turned out to be the whole story. Melbourne City were going nowhere until he came on.