Marked for Davit Gvelesiani
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match6 Apr 2030
No end in sight to Gandzasar's wait for a win
10 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Gandzasar has to find a result from somewhere.
Match8 Apr 2030
Gandzasar sink to position 10
1 points, and a fixture list that is running out. The mathematics are not yet cruel, but they are no longer kind.
Match3 Apr 2030
Shirak ended it 1‑2. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Player ratings8 Apr 2030
Ricardo Falcón pops up at the right end — 7.65
7.65, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Player ratings8 Apr 2030
A chastening introduction for David Mkhitaryan — 5.45
It is a hard way to meet a crowd. Marked 5.45 on the day he was handed the shirt, and the important thing now is what the next one looks like.
Squad8 Apr 2030
297 appearances across 8 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Boardroom8 Apr 2030
The Gandzasar board want somebody sold
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
Squad8 Apr 2030
Bertrand Mani 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.
Match6 Apr 2030
BKMA left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market27 Aug 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.
Squad27 Aug 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gandzasar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad27 Aug 2029
Martin Grigoryan 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match9 Jun 2029
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. Gandzasar scored in the 90th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Market11 Jun 2029
“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 Gandzasar, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad11 Jun 2029
Bertrand Mani 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.
Match9 Jun 2029
A 2‑1 win over BKMA, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings11 Jun 2029
A performance of 8.86 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Squad11 Jun 2029
Kristjan Kask 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.
Squad11 Jun 2029
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad11 Jun 2029
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Player ratings11 Jun 2029
Successful dribbles: 10. 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
Crisis
The terraces4 Jun 2029
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 13 of the 30 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Match2 Jun 2029
The wait goes on for Gandzasar
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Squad4 Jun 2029
287 appearances across 8 seasons in these colours. Careers like that are not built any more, and Gandzasar know what they have.
Market4 Jun 2029
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Gandzasar they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad4 Jun 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gandzasar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match2 Jun 2029
1‑3 to Ararat-Armenia, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad4 Jun 2029
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Davit Gvelesiani commits to Gandzasar for another 4 years.
Squad4 Jun 2029
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings4 Jun 2029
A performance of 8.42 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
In brief
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Boardroom
104% of the income goes out in wages at Gandzasar
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Player ratings
Jerzino never got going
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Player ratings
Ethan Lizalda runs at them all day
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad16 Apr 2029
A knee injury of the worst kind for Lukáš Ho Hung
16 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Gandzasar lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market16 Apr 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.
Player ratings16 Apr 2029
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.12, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Match14 Apr 2029
No end in sight to Gandzasar's wait for a win
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Gandzasar has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad16 Apr 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Gandzasar this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Apr 2029
Words at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kristjan Kask 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.
Squad16 Apr 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Davit Gvelesiani, and the manager let it.
Match14 Apr 2029
A 2‑2 draw with Ararat leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Player ratings16 Apr 2029
5.65 on the card. Some afternoons a footballer looks like a man who has only just been introduced to the game, and this was one of them.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces1 Jan 2029
Anger at Gandzasar spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Market1 Jan 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.
Squad1 Jan 2029
Bertrand Mani 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.
Squad1 Jan 2029
Kristjan Kask 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.
Squad1 Jan 2029
Too much change too quickly at Gandzasar
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Squad1 Jan 2029
Davit Gvelesiani loses the manager who believed in him
A change in the dugout is not one story, it is twenty-five of them. This is Davit Gvelesiani's: he was somebody's player, and now he has to be somebody else's, starting from nothing.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad20 Nov 2028
Bertrand Mani 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.
Squad20 Nov 2028
22 days, the medical staff say, and medical staff are optimists by profession. The team sheet will look wrong without him.
Squad20 Nov 2028
Words at Gandzasar training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Martin Grigoryan 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.
Market20 Nov 2028
He is 19, and nobody at Gandzasar signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Boardroom20 Nov 2028
85% of the income goes out in wages at Gandzasar
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.
Squad20 Nov 2028
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.