Marked for Jacob Mitchell
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad29 Jul 2030
A knee injury of the worst kind for Jack Marshall
19 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Sheffield Wednesday lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market29 Jul 2030
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Fulham waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Sheffield Wednesday is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Market29 Jul 2030
Only the photograph left for Josh Dasilva
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Josh Dasilva will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sheffield Wednesday the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Squad29 Jul 2030
Costinha 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.
Squad29 Jul 2030
Jacob Mitchell is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Squad29 Jul 2030
Daniel Jebbison 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.
The dugout29 Jul 2030
news_b_reunited_with_his_manager
Transfer targets29 Jul 2030
Sheffield Wednesday asked and Manchester City said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Market29 Jul 2030
Jacob Mitchell is 18, and Sheffield Wednesday have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad22 Jul 2030
26 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Sheffield Wednesday lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
Sheffield Wednesday and Arsenal have settled on $270.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Market22 Jul 2030
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
The dugout22 Jul 2030
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad22 Jul 2030
Costinha 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.
Squad22 Jul 2030
Words at Sheffield Wednesday training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Jebbison 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.
The dugout22 Jul 2030
news_b_reunited_with_his_manager
Transfer targets22 Jul 2030
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Manchester United have kept their man, and Sheffield Wednesday go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The dugout22 Jul 2030
“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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad18 Feb 2030
Bukayo Saka is in the form of his life
A season average of 7.63 with 33 goals behind it. Opponents have started planning around him, which is the sincerest compliment football pays.
Match16 Feb 2030
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Yoan Bonny will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at Arsenal escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Squad18 Feb 2030
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 35 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Transfer targets18 Feb 2030
The clock did what Wrexham would not, and ended it. Supporters who watched the countdown will spend the next window doing it again.
Squad18 Feb 2030
A falling-out at Arsenal
Bukayo Saka and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Boardroom18 Feb 2030
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Squad18 Feb 2030
Savinho 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.
Loan watch18 Feb 2030
16 shut-outs in 24 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Alexei Rojas Fedorushchenko has been having a lot of them.
The dugout18 Feb 2030
The manager makes an example of Ethan Nwaneri
“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.