The Gonio Post
Boardroom3 Dec 2029
Relegation confirmed for Gonio
The arithmetic is finished and so is the season. A hard summer starts early, and next year’s fixture list will read like a different sport.
Squad3 Dec 2029
A fracture rules Levan Barabadze out for 139 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Gonio will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Boardroom3 Dec 2029
Gonio spell it out for the manager
The board’s statement ran to three sentences and one of them mentioned results. the manager has managed long enough to translate: win soon, or the next statement is shorter.
Market3 Dec 2029
Alemão 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 Gonio can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom3 Dec 2029
Emergency meeting at Gonio
The whole football department in one room on a weekday morning. Nothing was announced afterwards, which is what a board announces when it has run out of patience.
Squad3 Dec 2029
Alemão wants to go home
“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 Gonio know it.
Squad3 Dec 2029
Tempers go at Gonio
Alemão 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 Dec 2029
The decline has begun for Yan Zhiyu
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 36 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Gonio is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Market3 Dec 2029
Yan Zhiyu already looking beyond Gonio
He signed expecting a bigger stage than the one he found. It has not taken long, and it has not taken the dressing room long to notice either.
In brief
- Market Gonio and Ilia Katsiashvili are talking past each other
- Market A long bet from Gonio on Jonathan Jackson
- The dugout The manager's exit leaves Levan Barabadze exposed