Javi Hernàndez 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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Martín Pascual, and the manager let it.
The dugout28 Dec 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 0‑2 Iván Parra left the room before anybody could ask which.
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Tahiel Jiménez is 20, and for one weekend he was the best of everybody his age in the division. Nobody should build a career on it and everybody quietly does.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mirandés this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Successful dribbles: 20. 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.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Ibai Ortiz has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Javier Diez is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
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.
“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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Rafita is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
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.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Diego Celis 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.
Almería next, and one man in the Mirandés dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
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.
Josué Dorrio 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 academy exists for exactly this morning. Markel Santos has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Igor Nikić knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
In brief
The dugoutThe manager has not finished forgetting Igor Nikić's mistake