Marked for Patrick Linnes
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces2 Jul 2029
Supporters organise against the Khimik board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Match2 Jul 2029
Khimik are in real trouble now
Position 11, 18 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
The Khimik board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Market2 Jul 2029
“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.
Transfer targets2 Jul 2029
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Khimik have done the hard part with Dinamo Vladivostok, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
The dugout2 Jul 2029
This is not rotation. Brian Magare has not been in the manager's plans for some time, and nobody at Khimik is pretending otherwise.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Archie Davis 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 Khimik this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market2 Jul 2029
The name of Vladislav Kuznetsov has come up in conversations Khimik were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad14 May 2029
A row about effort at Khimik
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kirill Gordeev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom14 May 2029
Wages eat 189% of everything Khimik 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.
Squad14 May 2029
A last season at home is what Brian Magare is after
It is sentimental, it is completely genuine, and it is the beginning of a departure nobody has announced. The club can be gracious about it or it can pretend not to have heard.
Squad14 May 2029
Words exchanged at Khimik
Yegor Akimov 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.
Squad14 May 2029
“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; Khimik are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Market14 May 2029
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Khimik, another week without a signature from Yegor Akimov.
The dugout14 May 2029
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Franciszek Antkiewicz is on it.
Market14 May 2029
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Kirill Gordeev signs something — a contract at Khimik or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Market14 May 2029
The clock does Yegor Akimov’s negotiating for him
1 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Khimik could ask drops and the wages Yegor Akimov can ask rise.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Mar 2029
A fracture rules Brian Magare out for 79 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Khimik will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom5 Mar 2029
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. Yakov Baranov has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Market5 Mar 2029
Brian Magare hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Khimik can pretend not to have heard.
Market5 Mar 2029
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Sevastopol waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Khimik is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Squad5 Mar 2029
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Vyacheslav Zinkov and Khimik agree another 2 years.
Squad5 Mar 2029
A row about effort at Khimik
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Kirill Gordeev was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad5 Mar 2029
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Khimik know it.
Boardroom5 Mar 2029
No fees may be paid for anybody, whatever the squad needs. Every rumour about this club until it lifts is a rumour about a deal that cannot be done.
Market5 Mar 2029
A stepping stone, not a home, for Andrej Rebic
He is doing his job and he is not settling. Khimik were supposed to be a step up in his own reckoning, and his own reckoning has been adjusted since he arrived.