Marked for Dostonbek Fayzullaev
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad12 Oct 2026
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Lokomotiv lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market12 Oct 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Lokomotiv they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words exchanged at Lokomotiv
Aleksandar Šušnjar 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.
The dugout12 Oct 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 dugout12 Oct 2026
Nobody at Lokomotiv 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.
Looking ahead12 Oct 2026
Nasaf next, and one man in the Lokomotiv dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Lokomotiv will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Zarija Lambulić asks for a word with the manager
“I would rather say it to his face than read about it.” The meeting was requested by the player, which tells you most of what you need to know.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad5 Oct 2026
24 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Lokomotiv lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Aleksandar Šušnjar 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Lokomotiv are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad5 Oct 2026
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 34 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Match3 Oct 2026
Metallurg made Lokomotiv work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 138% of everything Lokomotiv earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Match3 Oct 2026
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Jovan Nišić in the middle of it, and Metallurg unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 8.31 — 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad28 Sep 2026
The words a physio says slowly. 32 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.87 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 24. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad28 Sep 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Lokomotiv this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Everybody at Lokomotiv saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 37 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
Match26 Sep 2026
Level with 95 minutes on the clock, after an afternoon Lokomotiv had all but put away. Mashal will call it a point earned; the home dressing room will call it two given away, and both of them are right.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Too much change too quickly at Lokomotiv
18 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Match26 Sep 2026
It needed Temurxo'ja Abduxoliqov to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Mashal, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Timur Ahmedov was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the Lokomotiv dressing room was either.