Marked for Mark Davis
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match23 Oct 2049
7 matches without a win for Sochi 2
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Sochi 2 are no longer polite ones.
Market25 Oct 2049
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Sochi 2 is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad25 Oct 2049
Daniel Provod falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Squad25 Oct 2049
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Henry Young, and the manager let it.
Player ratings25 Oct 2049
Daniel Provod was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.39. 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.
Player ratings25 Oct 2049
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match23 Oct 2049
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Squad25 Oct 2049
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.
Squad25 Oct 2049
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad27 Sep 2049
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Squad27 Sep 2049
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Player ratings27 Sep 2049
Age has not caught Igor Zakharov yet — 7.96
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.96 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Market27 Sep 2049
Mark Davis has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sochi 2 they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match25 Sep 2049
10 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Sochi 2 and Legion in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
Player ratings27 Sep 2049
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.33, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad27 Sep 2049
Words at Sochi 2 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Provod 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.
Match25 Sep 2049
A 5‑5 draw with Legion leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Player ratings27 Sep 2049
Marked 8.00 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market30 Aug 2049
Sochi 2 say no — this time
The offer from Baltika for Maksim Zolotov was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Market30 Aug 2049
Only the photograph left for Mark Davis
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Mark Davis will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sochi 2 the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Match28 Aug 2049
Druzhba made Sochi 2 work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad30 Aug 2049
Words at Sochi 2 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Provod 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.
Player ratings30 Aug 2049
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.29, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad30 Aug 2049
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Radomir Ushakov commits to Sochi 2 for another 3 years.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market2 Aug 2049
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Sochi 2 can pretend not to have heard.
Market2 Aug 2049
Mark Davis has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Sochi 2 they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Match31 Jul 2049
Sochi 2 leaking at the back
5 matches, two or more conceded in every one of them. Sides that create as much as this can live with it for a while. Nobody lives with it forever.
Squad2 Aug 2049
Henry Young falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Match31 Jul 2049
Beaten 1‑2, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad2 Aug 2049
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Sochi 2 this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Aug 2049
Igor Zakharov named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Igor Zakharov is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Squad2 Aug 2049
Henry Young dropped after a run of poor form
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Player ratings2 Aug 2049
The substitution nobody applauded turned out to be the whole story. Sochi 2 were going nowhere until he came on.