Luiz Yano 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 Oct 2040
A muscle injury sidelines Ignacio Rios for 14 days
Nobody makes a documentary about a hamstring and everybody in the game fears one. Albion will be careful with the return date, because the second one is always worse than the first.
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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Albion have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Oct 2040
Words at Albion training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Franco Martínez 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Albion will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Albion 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 68 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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
The board have said in public what they had been saying in private. Results between now and the next meeting decide it, and everybody in the building knows the arithmetic.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Albion will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The official line will be that it was routine. It was not routine, the timing says so, and every person in that room knows what the next bad result costs.
Pablo Suárez 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.
Squad6 Jun 2039
Words at Albion training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Samkelo Dlamuka 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 board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.