Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Riyaan El Kaddouri has just signed for Oldham Athletic, and for once the answer mattered.
Ryan Teleku 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.
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
The dugout1 Oct 2035
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Interim Coach was not hiding it after 1‑1, and nobody in the Oldham Athletic dressing room was either.
In brief
The dugoutMarcus Søberg asks for a word with the manager
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 9 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
0‑3 to Cheltenham Town, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Oldham Athletic can pretend not to have heard.
Boardroom3 Sep 2035
Oldham Athletic close the window on a squad of their own making
11 in and 18 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
Leo McCormick 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.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Casper Lindner is living that version at Oldham Athletic, and it tends to show in the first month.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Olivér Kalmár 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.
Two goals and a mark of 8.52 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Leo McCormick 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Kane Drummond. 2‑1 against Barrow AFC, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
He is 18 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.
5 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Barrow AFC were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Aymane Jelbat 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.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.