Position 23, 12 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Player ratings7 Dec 2026
A brace, and Will Collar takes the afternoon — 8.09
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Will Collar provided it, and the 8.09 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Burton Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Toby Sibbick was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“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 Burton Albion know it.
4 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.
Malcolm Ebiowei 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.
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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Toby Sibbick 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.
“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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Oliver Roberts was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Burton Albion dressing room was either.
Will Collar 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Burton Albion training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Toby Sibbick 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 is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Burton Albion told Mark O'Mahony something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Caylan Vickers trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at Burton Albion has been clear about where Kyran Lofthouse stands, which is more than many ever get.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Will Collar’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Burton Albion needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Aston Villa go through and Burton Albion go home, 0‑4 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
0-4, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Burton Albion this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
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.
Will Collar 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.
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.
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout19 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 0‑1 Oliver Roberts left the room before anybody could ask which.