Marked for Eder
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces7 Dec 2026
Anger at Gornik Leczna spills outside the ground
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
Successful dribbles: 32. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Dec 2026
No end in sight to Gornik Leczna's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Gornik Leczna has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 7 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Boardroom7 Dec 2026
The silence upstairs is getting loud at Gornik Leczna
Nobody on the board has said anything against the manager, which is the point — they have stopped saying anything for him either.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Darío 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.
Match5 Dec 2026
0‑2 to Lech, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Bartosz Biedrzycki 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.
Looking ahead7 Dec 2026
Everything rides on Slask
Both clubs in the mire, one fixture between them, and a ground that will be louder and more frightened than at any point in the season. Gornik Leczna know what is at stake and so does everybody in the away end.
In brief
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Squad
Eder slips down the pecking order
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The dugout
The view from the dugout
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The dugout
The manager makes an example of Branislav Spáčil
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad9 Nov 2026
There were 8 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Match7 Nov 2026
Jagiellonia left with the points after a 1‑3 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Bartosz Śpiączka 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.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
Eder gets it from the manager
“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.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Bartosz Biedrzycki was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Player ratings9 Nov 2026
There was one mistake and it ended in the net. Defenders are judged on the worst thing they did rather than on the eighty-nine minutes either side of it, which is unfair and is also the job.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
Egzon Kryeziu knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Egzon Kryeziu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
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.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Vintage Eder — 7.91
At 39 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 7.91, and nobody on the pitch better.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Bartosz Tomaszewski 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Dawid Tkacz named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Dawid Tkacz is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Match31 Oct 2026
It needed Eder to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Piast, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
“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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
It will be explained as a change for the team and it may even be one. Nobody who has worn one believes that, and neither does the man who has just had it taken away.
Market2 Nov 2026
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Gornik Leczna, another week without a signature from Adam Deja.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 1‑1 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match26 Oct 2026
Every point is an argument now for Gornik Leczna
Position 13 and 8 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Gornik Leczna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bartosz Biedrzycki 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Michał Bierzało 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 1‑2 Sebastian Glik left the room before anybody could ask which.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
“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 dugout26 Oct 2026
Eder knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Gornik Leczna, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout26 Oct 2026
Patryk Malamis 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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Two goals and a mark of 8.96 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad12 Oct 2026
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Paweł Jaroszyński and Gornik Leczna agree another 2 years.
Squad12 Oct 2026
At 19 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
Legia made Gornik Leczna work for it, but the scoreboard read 3‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Darío 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.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Marked 8.96 — 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Bartosz Śpiączka in the middle of it, and Legia unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
The dugout12 Oct 2026
Adam Deja gets it from the manager
“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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match5 Sep 2026
7 matches without a win for Gornik Leczna
The run now stands at 7, and the questions being asked around Gornik Leczna are no longer polite ones.
Market7 Sep 2026
The Lech deal is off
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Paweł Jaroszyński reports back to Gornik Leczna with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.88 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 20 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Gornik Leczna until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Everything agreed with Podbeskidzie, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Squad7 Sep 2026
100 for the club now, each one filed in somebody’s memory with a date and a scoreline. Numbers like this are what supporters argue about in twenty years.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Gornik Leczna asked and Wycombe Wanderers said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Gornik Leczna training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Bartosz Biedrzycki 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.
In brief
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Player ratings
Egzon Kryeziu was on a different afternoon to everybody else
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Squad
Tempers go at Gornik Leczna
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The dugout
Eder gets it from the manager