Andy Irving 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.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Pardubice are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mikuláš Konečný is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
1‑0 against Rio Ave, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pardubice this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Aleš Mandous 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.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Michal Hubínek.
Nobody at Pardubice 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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
5 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
At 22 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.
Viktoria Plzen left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout19 Oct 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Vladimir Cerny to a room that had heard them before.
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.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Michal Hlavatý’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Pardubice needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Andy Irving 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.
16 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Denis Darmovzal was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Viktoria Plzen.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Vojtěch Patrák has his answer from Pardubice; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Nobody at Pardubice 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.
0‑2 against Mallorca, and an evening that measured the gap rather than the ninety minutes. Nothing about it was a disgrace and nothing about it was close.
4 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.
4 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Pardubice can tell you which week it ends in.
Daniel Smékal 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Pardubice training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Michal Hlavatý 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.
Michal Hlavatý 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Pardubice know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Matěj Škrdla was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Marked 7.32. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Vladimir Cerny was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Pardubice dressing room was either.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
2‑1 against ZTE, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Fivos Botos was at the centre of the description.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 96th minute. ZTE will replay every second of the added time for a week.
At 21 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Milan Lexa has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Marked 8.08 — 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.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at Pardubice training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matěj Škrdla 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
The dugoutThe team sheet said everything about Michal Hubínek
Player ratingsThe afternoon belonged to Tomáš Vlček
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Pardubice people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Successful dribbles: 28. 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.
Andy Irving 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.
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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Universitatea Craiova have kept their man, and Pardubice go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
17 new faces, and Pardubice are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Pardubice people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Rudar Velenje had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 21 arrived, 22 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Andy Irving 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.
Pardubice asked and Zenit said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Bohdan Sliubyk has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Matěj Škrdla 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.
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Arouna Ouattara has come out of that comparison in the side, and Pardubice have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Pardubice can pretend not to have heard.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Kparobo Arierhi has, at Pardubice, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Pardubice offered $660.0K; Dukla Prague 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.
Michal Hlavatý 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.
Pardubice asked and Slavia Prague said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Pardubice people have started saying his name in the past tense.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Luka Kharatishvili: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. Pardubice have paid $4.3M for Andy Irving, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
Pardubice and Lillestrom have settled on $720.0K. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Some transfers need a press campaign. This one needed a shirt with the old number on it. Tomáš Vlček is a Pardubice player again, and the town has its story of the summer.
Pardubice asked and Sparta Prague said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
$660.0K on the table at Dukla Prague. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The terracesPardubice spend $4.3M on the signing the town wanted
3Edition
The Pardubice Sentinel
17 Aug 2026
From our football correspondentCrisis
Transfer targets17 Aug 2026
$4.3M settles it between the clubs for Andy Irving
Sparta Prague have accepted the money. What Pardubice do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
The offer from Vlašim for Jáchym Šerák 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Pardubice this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Sparta Prague have kept their man, and Pardubice go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
200 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Pardubice will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Squad17 Aug 2026
14 new faces, and Pardubice are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Milan Lexa wins it after the whistle should have gone
92 minutes played. Milan Lexa found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Slovacko went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Milan Lexa did not need any: 7.98, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Michal Hubínek has just signed for Pardubice, and for once the answer mattered.
Pardubice asked and Sparta Prague said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Shakhtar keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Slovacko did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $350.0K for Patrik Blahút, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
Michal Hlavatý 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Pardubice, and it is not being withdrawn.
Aleš Mandous 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 thought about how hard another man trains, and Michal Hlavatý was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Pardubice asked and Slovan Bratislava said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Pardubice are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Still no offer on the table, and Daniel Smékal’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Pardubice have made the call to Shakhtar. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.