A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Meshakhte Tkibuli will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 34 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Meshakhte Tkibuli is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Miroslav Kondratovich was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Meshakhte Tkibuli is running low.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Meshakhte Tkibuli 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Meshakhte Tkibuli can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
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.
40 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Meshakhte Tkibuli lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Meshakhte Tkibuli can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lasha Ugrekhelidze 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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Meshakhte Tkibuli. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutEhsan Ghoddos knocks on the manager’s door
75 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Meshakhte Tkibuli lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Meshakhte Tkibuli can pretend not to have heard.
Tiba 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Ondrej Barak has just signed for Meshakhte Tkibuli, and for once the answer mattered.
Gareji Sagarejo will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Rogério Sena has pre-agreed a move to Meshakhte Tkibuli, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lasha Ugrekhelidze was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ondrej Barak is 20, and Meshakhte Tkibuli 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.
103 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Meshakhte Tkibuli lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Meshakhte Tkibuli is running low.
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.
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 phone has started ringing about Ronnie Sandford again, and this time the name on the line is Merani. Meshakhte Tkibuli are listening politely and promising nothing.
Meshakhte Tkibuli have made the call to Samgurali Tskaltubo. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
The words a physio says slowly. 138 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.
“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 Meshakhte Tkibuli, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Meshakhte Tkibuli 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.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $9.9M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Nikoloz Chomakhidze trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Meshakhte Tkibuli will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Meshakhte Tkibuli is running low.
“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 Meshakhte Tkibuli, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Meshakhte Tkibuli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lasha Ugrekhelidze was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee Meshakhte Tkibuli could ask drops and the wages Joel can ask rise.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Meshakhte Tkibuli, another week without a signature from Valentyn Kovalenko.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Meshakhte Tkibuli would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Meshakhte Tkibuli can pretend not to have heard.
Tiba 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giorgi Papuashvili 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.
“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 Meshakhte Tkibuli know it.
The borrowing is past what the bank agreed, which is the line where a debt stops being how football is financed and starts being a problem. Every phone-in in this town will quote the figure for the next five years.
Manuel Fuentes is 19, and Meshakhte Tkibuli 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Meshakhte Tkibuli will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Meshakhte Tkibuli, and both men came out saying it was fine.
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Meshakhte Tkibuli can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Meshakhte Tkibuli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Bruno Farias has just signed for Meshakhte Tkibuli, and for once the answer mattered.
The gap in the accounts was filled from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be grateful and to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings arrive together.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Giorgi Papuashvili was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is sentimental, it is completely genuine, and it is the beginning of a departure nobody has announced. The club can be gracious about it or it can pretend not to have heard.