The shortfall was covered from upstairs again. Supporters are entitled to be relieved and entitled to ask what happens the month it is not, and both feelings usually arrive together.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Gimnasia La Plata have kept their man, and Gimnasia y Esgrima go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Gimnasia y Esgrima, another week without a signature from Mauricio Almirón.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
In brief
Transfer targetsA loan move for Rafa is in the works
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.94 at 34, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“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 The request is on a desk at Gimnasia y Esgrima, and it is not being withdrawn.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
16 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 15 combined actions and a mark of 7.35, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Santiago Martínez 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.
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 manager may talk to whoever he likes and may pay nobody. A squad survives a window like this by borrowing, by promoting, and by hoping the injuries land somewhere else.
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.
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.01 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Santiago Martínez 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Ramiro Contreras was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
12 combined actions and 6.63. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
He is 20 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Liniers go through and Gimnasia y Esgrima go home, 0‑4 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
“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 Gimnasia y Esgrima, and it is not being withdrawn.
It finished 0-4. A cup exit is a disappointment; this was a public dismantling, and the difference between the two is the number of people who will still be talking about it in August.
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Gimnasia y Esgrima has to find a result from somewhere.
Santiago Martínez 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.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ramiro Contreras was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Past the limit the bank set, which is the line between a club being financed and a club being in trouble. $7.3M is now the number every conversation about this club will start with.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Gimnasia y Esgrima can pretend not to have heard.
Santiago Martínez 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.
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. 19 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.
Everything agreed with Estudiantes, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Santiago Martínez 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.
This is money that keeps the lights on rather than money that buys a centre-half, and the difference is the whole story. A club funded by its owner rather than by its football has exactly one conversation left ahead of it.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. River Plate have kept their man, and Gimnasia y Esgrima go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Lautaro Alberti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Signings arrive with a picture of the club in their head, and this one’s picture was bigger than the building. He will play well and he will be gone, in that order, and everybody knows it.
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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Gimnasia y Esgrima will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.