A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. PAOK will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
19 goals in 36 games at Kayserispor — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at PAOK updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether PAOK can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
The phone has started ringing about Anestis Mythou again, and this time the name on the line is Neman. PAOK are listening politely and promising nothing.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Greg Taylor trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PAOK will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
26 appearances at Hapoel Beer Sheva and the goals have stopped going in. PAOK lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Taha Ali is on it.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at PAOK that is a harder question to answer.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Jonjoe Kenny has written the date down.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 80 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Taison 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.
Julien Ngoy 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.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. PAOK know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PAOK have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Taison was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
14 shut-outs in 26 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Lukas Ramil Sauer has been having a lot of them.
Julien Ngoy 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Taha Ali is on it.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at PAOK would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PAOK heard it as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Baba Rahman was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody at PAOK will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
The clubs have shaken hands with CSKA Sofia; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PAOK have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Successful dribbles: 22. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Costa 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.
Julien Ngoy 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 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.
Successful dribbles: 27. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Jonjoe Kenny, and the manager let it.
The dugout14 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Spyridon Androutsos, on a 1‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 111 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
FC Midtjylland paid $12.9M and PAOK took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
PAOK have gone to Viking with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Christos Zafeiris has gone, the accounts have $12.9M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.02 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The fee is $210.0K, the contract is signed, and the argument about whether he is worth it can begin. OFI drove a hard bargain; time will say who won it.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PAOK will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Spartak Moscow moved on, Christos Zafeiris reports back to PAOK, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
PAOK offered $3.6M; Panathinaikos said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Atromitos have kept their man, and PAOK go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Diego Costa 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PAOK this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.