It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Tula this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Arsenal Tula will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Arsenal Tula told Alan Tsaraev something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Rotor kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Arsenal Tula will be asked about the last half hour all week.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Arsenal Tula can pretend not to have heard.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Arsenal Tula 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 Arsenal Tula this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 22 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.
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Tula lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The chase for Sultan Djamilov ended with $140.0K changing hands and Neftekhimik out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Reziuan Mirzov 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: Edarlyn Reyes. 2‑1 against Sokol, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Artem Popov 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.
32 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Arsenal Tula lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
2 in front and in complete control, and it finished with Neftekhimik the happier side. There is no version of this afternoon that Arsenal Tula will enjoy reviewing.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Arsenal Tula this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Marked 8.66 — 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.
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.
Bogdan Petrović, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.27
A mark of 8.27 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Reziuan Mirzov 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.
6 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Arsenal Tula 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 Arsenal Tula can pretend not to have heard.
Roman Izotov 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.
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.
Reziuan Mirzov 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Arsenal Tula has been clear about where Alexandr Putsko stands, which is more than many ever get.
48 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Arsenal Tula, another week without a signature from Artem Arutyunov.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
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.
In brief
Player ratingsThe chances came and went for Ivan Ignatjev