The words a physio says slowly. 21 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
2 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
At 23 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.
29 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 5 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Isaac Price 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.
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
The words a physio says slowly. 44 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
0‑3 against Leicester City, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Isaac Price 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.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at West Bromwich Albion can tell you which week it ends in.
The words a physio says slowly. 51 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Miller McDonald is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
59 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Isaac Price 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.
68 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
7 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
75 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at West Bromwich Albion has to find a result from somewhere.
Isaac Price 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ousmane Diakité 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.
82 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 4 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
The words a physio says slowly. 90 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
0‑4 against Swansea City, and no complaints that would survive the replay. The manager spoke about character afterwards; the terraces used shorter words.
Isaac Price 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 a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Saxon Earley is living that version at West Bromwich Albion, and it tends to show in the first month.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
98 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what West Bromwich Albion can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at West Bromwich Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The name of Tammer Kumar has come up in conversations West Bromwich Albion were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
In brief
SquadOusmane Diakité falls out with a teammate over standards
The words a physio says slowly. 106 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Isaac Price 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 morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
115 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. West Bromwich Albion lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Chris Mepham and West Bromwich Albion agree another 4 years.
Isaac Price 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.