The words a physio says slowly. 38 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.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Rotor 2, and both men came out saying it was fine.
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.
He came through the session, took part in everything and finished it smiling. Rotor 2 will not rush him, and he will spend the next fortnight trying to rush them.
Words at Rotor 2 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Issac Fataki 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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Benoît Rolland and Rotor 2 agree another 2 years.
Squad10 Oct 2044
Words at Rotor 2 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Issac Fataki 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.