The Montana Gazette
Match12 Aug 2028
19 matches without a win for Montana
The run now stands at 19, and the questions being asked around Montana are no longer polite ones.
Market14 Aug 2028
Only the photograph left for Goor Córdoba Mena
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Goor Córdoba Mena will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Montana the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Player ratings14 Aug 2028
Philip Ejike runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 23. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Noah Mawéné is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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.
Squad14 Aug 2028
A late step up for Philip Ejike
At 26 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.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Thomas Drage 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.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Angelos Tsingaras in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Montana this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings14 Aug 2028
A masterclass from Aleksandar Todorov
Marked 8.63 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings14 Aug 2028
A masterclass from Petar Andreev
Marked 8.01 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
In brief
- Match Montana and Lokomotiv Sofia take a point apiece
- Market Zinho Courtois told to find a new club
- Player ratings Off the pace: Zarija Lambulić