Marked for Matthew Wright
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad1 Oct 2035
A knee injury of the worst kind for Luke Chambers
63 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Cambridge United lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad1 Oct 2035
99 appearances across 12 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Cambridge United know what they have.
Market1 Oct 2035
Martin Pohl 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 Cambridge United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad1 Oct 2035
Words at Cambridge United training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Enock Agyei 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.
Match29 Sep 2035
It finished 1‑0, and it was Enock Agyei’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Cambridge United.
Squad1 Oct 2035
“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.
Player ratings1 Oct 2035
Ninety minutes of Enock Agyei at his very best
Marked 8.09. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Cambridge United.
Boardroom1 Oct 2035
Wages eat 90% of everything Cambridge United 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.
Player ratings1 Oct 2035
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad3 Sep 2035
Luke Chambers damages knee ligaments — 91 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 91 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.
Match1 Sep 2035
0‑5 to Plymouth Argyle, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Market3 Sep 2035
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Cambridge United can pretend not to have heard.
Squad3 Sep 2035
Robert Babic is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad3 Sep 2035
18 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Boardroom3 Sep 2035
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
Boardroom3 Sep 2035
92% of the income goes out in wages at Cambridge United
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Market3 Sep 2035
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. Cambridge United know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match16 Sep 2034
3‑0, and August Priske took the headlines on an afternoon when everything Birmingham tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Squad18 Sep 2034
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Player ratings18 Sep 2034
Age has not caught Demarai Gray yet — 7.82
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.82 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market18 Sep 2034
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Birmingham is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad18 Sep 2034
Demarai Gray 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 Birmingham this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad18 Sep 2034
Words at Birmingham training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Conor Bradley 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.
Player ratings18 Sep 2034
Marked 9.58 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings18 Sep 2034
Marked 8.33 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Squad18 Sep 2034
The manager makes an example of Jason Cooper
“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.