Position 9 and 12 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Gandzasar have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The mood at Gandzasar has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Gandzasar have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad23 Jul 2035
Hagai Katoh 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 words a physio says slowly. 40 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.
10 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 shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Nikita Lobusov: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Nikita Lobusov 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.
Squad18 Jun 2035
Words at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hagai Katoh 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.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 6.79, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
64 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gandzasar lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Gandzasar is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Francesco Puca has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
In brief
SquadHagai Katoh falls out with a teammate over standards
Bertrand Mani 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.
Squad21 Aug 2034
Words at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hagai Katoh 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 words a physio says slowly. 20 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.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.84, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad26 Jun 2034
Words at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hagai Katoh 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.
Artak Khachatryan 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.
17 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
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.
The words a physio says slowly. 34 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.
Bertrand Mani 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Artak Khachatryan and Gandzasar agree another 3 years.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Gandzasar know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
The words a physio says slowly. 101 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.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 97 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Gandzasar, and it is not being withdrawn.
In brief
SquadWords at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Hagai Katoh 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gandzasar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at Gandzasar 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.