“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hibernians can pretend not to have heard.
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around Hibernians are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Silas Alfred, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.91
A mark of 7.91 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Charleston 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.
At 21 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
A player who expected to start watched it instead. The manager will call it a decision for the team; Bjorn Kristensen will call it something else in private.
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 Hibernians this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 The request is on a desk at Hibernians, and it is not being withdrawn.
Bjorn Kristensen 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.
Marked 8.20. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Hibernians.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Words at Hibernians training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kurt Shaw 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Hibernians can pretend not to have heard.
Charleston 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Words at Hibernians training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kurt Shaw 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.
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
14 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 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 Hibernians this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jamie Sultana is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
22 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Hibernians can tell you which week it ends in.
22 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hibernians lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Charleston 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 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.
36 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hibernians lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Bjorn Kristensen 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.
7.56, and no serious argument from anybody who was there. Hibernians had eleven men on the pitch and one of them decided how it went.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Matthew Ellul 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.
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. Valletta defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
Every debut is a small story about the future: Gabriel Vella, 15 years old, off the academy pitches and into the first team. The parents in the stand will keep the programme.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hibernians this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at Hibernians training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Matthew Ellul 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.
Charleston 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.