Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bournemouth will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Bournemouth can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bournemouth will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Bournemouth is running low.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.22 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Luis Sinisterra and Bournemouth agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
“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 The request is on a desk at Bournemouth, and it is not being withdrawn.
Alex Scott 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.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Christopher Barnes will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bournemouth the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The words a physio says slowly. 57 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.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Daniel Jebbison provided it, and the 8.81 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Cardiff City made Bournemouth work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑2 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Player ratings16 Nov 2037
Ben Gannon Doak was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.35. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Squad16 Nov 2037
Words at Bournemouth training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bafodé Diakité 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.