Marked for Jonathan Turner
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match22 May 2028
27 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Market22 May 2028
“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 The request is on a desk at Ospitaletto, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad22 May 2028
Flavio Paoletti 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom1 May 2028
The scrutiny sharpens at Ospitaletto
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Ospitaletto is running low.
Market1 May 2028
“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.
Squad1 May 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Ospitaletto this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom3 Apr 2028
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Ospitaletto
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Match1 Apr 2028
4 matches without a win for Ospitaletto
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Ospitaletto are no longer polite ones.
Squad3 Apr 2028
Francesco Cereser 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.
Squad3 Apr 2028
Flavio Paoletti 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.
Squad3 Apr 2028
“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 Ospitaletto know it.
Player ratings3 Apr 2028
Successful dribbles: 15. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match31 Jan 2028
Ospitaletto are in real trouble now
Position 19, 16 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.
Market31 Jan 2028
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Ospitaletto can pretend not to have heard.
Match29 Jan 2028
No end in sight to Ospitaletto's wait for a win
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Ospitaletto has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Flavio Paoletti 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
A move Jonathan Turner would have made for nothing
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Jonathan Turner is living that version at Ospitaletto, and it tends to show in the first month.
Boardroom31 Jan 2028
Trento will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Murselo Dervishi has pre-agreed a move to Ospitaletto, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Words at Ospitaletto training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ernestas Lysionok 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.
Squad31 Jan 2028
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Mattia Guarneri, and the manager let it.
Player ratings31 Jan 2028
The afternoon belonged to Eljon Toci
7.47, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Ospitaletto had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad30 Aug 2027
A fracture rules Andrew Hughes out for 60 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Preston will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 30. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings30 Aug 2027
A defender's goal wins it for Preston — 7.33
1 for Ali McCann, marked 7.33, and a centre-half's name in the part of the report he normally only reaches by mistake. He will not be allowed to forget it in the dressing room for a month.
Squad30 Aug 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Lewis Gibson and Preston agree another 5 years.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Anthony Elanga 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.
Squad30 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Emre Ünüvar is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.