The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ben Gannon Doak did not need any: 7.80, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Queens Park Rangers has to find a result from somewhere.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ben Gannon Doak 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.
Koki Saito 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.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Queens Park Rangers this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Milton Keynes Dons spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Queens Park Rangers will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Queens Park Rangers this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Jacob Phillips has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Jonathan Howard has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Oliver Robinson is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jonathan Varane 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.
19 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.