Marked for Benjamin Johnson
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad9 Aug 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 17 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Charlie Crew is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad9 Aug 2027
Mathew Hudson 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.
Squad9 Aug 2027
At 34 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Four paragraphs on the club website, none of them about football. The board thanked him, wished him well, and had the search under way before the page went up.
Market2 Aug 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 24 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market2 Aug 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market2 Aug 2027
Mathew Hudson has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Oldham Athletic they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
“Somebody has to pick the team on Saturday, and this week that is me.” An interim appointment with no promises attached, which is how most of them start.
Squad2 Aug 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oldham Athletic this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Tom Conlon 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
The manager makes an example of Kane Drummond
“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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match26 Jul 2027
40 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 31 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Mathew Hudson 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.
Market26 Jul 2027
Fortaleza are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Oldham Athletic will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Words at Oldham Athletic training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Luke Hannant 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.