There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Oriyomi Lebi is living that version at Katsina United, and it tends to show in the first month.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Azeez Falolu was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The board have answered with money instead of encouragement, which is the only answer a manager ever wants. Spending it well is now entirely his problem.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
He is 20, and nobody at Katsina United signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Musa Sulaiman has his answer from Katsina United; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
The captaincy has been taken off Joshua Enaholo. Katsina United will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
Nobody at Katsina United 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.
At 18 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.
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 34 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
At 33 every good afternoon gets called a throwback, and this one was: 8.15, and nobody on the pitch better.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Azeez Falolu 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.
Marked 6.81 on 9 actions at both ends of the pitch. Midfielders like this get described as unspectacular by people who have never tried to play against one.
Moses Adikwu 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.
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.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑1, Stephen Awoniyi could afford to be generous.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager makes an example of Benjamin Jack
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Katsina United 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 Katsina United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 15. 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.
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 Mohammed Ibrahim is on it.
At 31 he has taken a place rather than been given one, and somebody else has to find something to say about it. Katsina United have a decision that made itself.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 1 on the scoresheet, 7.26 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Hassan Abubakar did not need any: 8.05, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.88 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Involvement in 2 goals, from a player who spent the ninety minutes doing the thing a manager actually wants: being where the ball was going to end up. 7.81 beside his name.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Hassan Abubakar 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.