"Sheer stupidity."
Maybe Leigh Griffiths had been fed that line in the bizarre public apology issued by Hibs today.
But it's pretty much bang on the money as a description of his behaviour in the past few weeks.
Gesturing Griffiths, the daftest laddie in the whole of Leith.

So Hibs decide to say farewell to Victor Palsson, the young Icelandic player they signed from Liverpool this time last year.
Contract terminated with immediate effect.
Or contract bought out in a mutually agreeable way to free up some wages for what is, at this stage in the transfer window, a rather slow-burning rebuilding job at Easter Road.

It seems like ages since I tickled the malnourished belly of the SPL with a wildly inaccurate prediction post.
I think the last time I Nostradamus-ed the weekend action Rangers had won the title and Motherwell were about to take the Champion's League by storm.
What a difference an eight point swing makes.

Occurs to me that anyone chancing across the blog might wonder what the Nora Batty is going on.
Well, I'm rambling on about football and a few mates are joining me here and there. But we're doing it to help out Alzheimer Scotland and the Homeless World Cup. If you can help please do. The links to do just that are all over this page.

One of the charities I'm hoping to benefit from next weekend's blogathon is Alzheimer Scotland.
There are a number of reasons for that choice but one of them is their excellent Football Reminiscence Project.
Simply it's a project that put volunteers in touch with football fans who suffer from dementia.

It's been another bad week for Hibs.
So I'm happy to share some good news.
Seven years ago Hibs awarded their exclusive merchandise rights to themselves.
That meant the club shop at Easter Road was the only place fans could buy official club merchandise.
This had its benefits.

Jock Stein speaks to GOAL! magazine in November 1964.
Transcript:
JOCK STEIN
Master Tactician
By Alun Cameron
£10,000!
That is the sum Hibs are reputed to be asking for their "return" friendly against Real Madrid. Hibs earned the right to command this fee on that night a few weeks ago when they not only defeated but thoroughly outclasses the team which is generally considered to be one of the world's greatest.

Agog today for the SPL's biggest game since the last big game.
Motherwell v Celtic.
If you'd said in July that third placed Celtic would need a November win to move ahead of second placed Motherwell on goal difference we probably wouldn't have believed you.
But such seismic events often only need the collision of one or two factors.

"Hearts are to work with City of Edinburgh Council to look into the feasibility of a community stadium, the football club have revealed." (BBC Sport)
And the alarm bells start ringing.
Yes, I'm a Hibs fan.
And many Hibs fans will recoil at the very suggestion - and at this stage a suggestion is all it is - that the City of Edinburgh Council should get involved in a Hearts stadium scheme.

"Verily I say unto you, no prophet is accepted in his own country."
There's different levels of prophecy. My meandering mumblings on the accounts of Hibernian Football Club wouldn't have made Luke pick up his quill.
It's also easier - especially in this world of Scottish football - to herald the arrival of bad news than to proclaim the happy-clappy joys we yearn for.

It's almost ten years since Franck Sauzée left Easter Road, a turbulent 69 days of management bringing a passionate Leith love affair to an end.
Yet he's still revered by the green and white hordes (not all, but a hefty number). Gone but ever more cherished.
Why?
Over the course of Ted Brack's account of the Sauzée era many observers – teammates, his former manager, Hibs legends and ordinary fans – try to get the bottom of what it was in the relationship between the veteran and the faithful that convinced so many supporters that there was indeed only "one Sauzée.

The pleasure in supporting a team like Hibs lies not in the glory.
It's in the continuity of following a team as generations of your family have before you. It's in the laughs you have along the way, the shared disappointments and the friends you make.
Friends like my mate Flash.

A tortuous night following Hibs' league cup win against Motherwell from afar.
They got there in the end, the dramatic cruelty of the penalty shoot-out and all that.
The "real" Hibs, said a relieved Colin Calderwood. But they were minutes away from another defeat.
Cometh the approaching final whistle, cometh the man.

Billy Brown is the new assistant manager at Hibs.
It's going to feel odd typing that for some time to come. Rumours had been swirling all week but it still came as a bit of a shock when the announcement was made.
That shouldn't really be the reaction.
Everything you've heard about Hibs v Aberdeen last Sunday is probably an understatement.

Hibernian striker Garry O' Connor (28) was in hiding last night after the 16 times capped Scottish striker was accused of failing a drugs test in 2009/10 while playing for Birmingham City in the Premier League.

And to add insult to injury it is alleged that O'Connor was also charged with fraud after his £100,000 Ferrari was mysteriously found crashed a few short miles from his home a few months ago.

The testimonial.
A footballing tradition ever diminished by the lucratively shifting sands of the modern game?
The Sabbath just gone saw me at Easter Road for Ian Murray's testimonial game.
The testimonial was once a way to honour players who had ten or more years of service to a certain club.

And so transfer deadline day came and went.
Celtic got a left back but not the nameless big name who cropped up in countless anonymous rumours.
Rangers did nothing except turn down a big bid from a nameless big club in an anonymous rumour that may or may not have come from someone who really should have scored in a cup final all those years ago.

The only managerial soap opera that was to have transpired in Edinburgh this summer was to have been at Easter Road involving the love triangle between Hibernian FC, Colin Calderwood, and Nottingham Forest. Then again, when "Mad Vlad" Romanov blows into town to see about things over at Tynecastle, general upheaval can never be too far out of the reckoning.

The BBC published a survey this week on the cost of watching football in Britain. An interesting exercise, the challenge was to find the cheapest day out at football grounds across the country.
(Note: Twohundredpercent has a cautionary tale about the BBC's methodology and, of course, the survey ignored the Scottish Football League.

The third and final part of a random collection of players I'll be keeping my eye on as this SPL season progresses. Today a player each from St Mirren and Dunfermline.
Nigel Hasselbaink, St Mirren"If football was played in the air," an old sage of Easter Road once told me, "then Paul Fenwick would be Pele.

Part two of a completely scattergun selection of a dozen players whose progress I'm keen to track in 2010/11 SPL. St Mirren and Dunfermline will follow tomorrow.
Sean O'Hanlon, HibernianThe returning Ivan Sproule and Garry O'Connor have left Sean O'Hanlon's arrival at Easter Road somewhat overshadowed.

The first of Sunday's two SPL games as Celtic travel to Hibs to give a green tinge to the opening weekend.
The GameFor a variety of reasons, some of which are explored below, this is an away win for me. End of.*
HibsWell, what a swell summer it's been for Hibs. Managerial uncertainty has swirled, training ground punches have been hurled and transfer deals have unfurled.

The commentators have fixed the month for me, they have chosen the date and the day. But I advise them: "Don't count your chickens before they are hatched."
Remember what happened to Marie Lloyd. She fixed the day and the date, and she told us what happened. As far as I remember it went like this: 'There was I, waiting at the church.

During the summer, when time is often measured in the latest player transfer rumours rather than in minutes passed, we have become acclimated to the concept of a player having his head "turned" and wanting to leave his current club of employ. In the English Premiership, Arsenal have endured seemingly countless summers of speculation on when club captain Cesc Fabregas will leave for Spain in a genetic quest to have his DNA properly aligned at the Camp Nou.

The Terrace Scottish Football Podcast are putting together a club-by-club of the Scottish football season just past.
The honour of wrestling with events at Easter Road fell to me.
This was another grim year for Hibs. The sun seems to rarely shine on Leith these days:

"But any review of the 2010/11 season is a review of myriad failings over recent years.

The starter before the main course. The stale garlic bread with mouldy mozzarella before the Old Firm's Wagyu steak.
The bottom six chunter out of view with everything decided and nowt left to play for. Inverness are safe in seventh - and how we thank the split for making seventh place such an aspirational target - and Hamilton are doon.

In the end Hamilton had left their late rally too late. A good couple of months too late.
A season that began with back to back 4-0 defeats ended last night in relegation with a game to spare.
St Johnstone ended up the executioners. But Hamilton had were the authors their own death warrant.

Aberdeen v St JohnstoneRumours that Aberdeen had buggered off on an early summer holiday proved to be exaggerated in last week's win over Inverness. A little northern light in a bleak end to the season.
And St Johnstone scored at Easter Road. Not once but twice. In a win. Winning football games is relatively simple when you score more than the opposition.

The attacking football, the flair game, that Hibs fans are said to hold so dear is oft maligned and often frustrates those managers tasked with satisfying the demands of supporters.
That footballing ideal, which perhaps exists more in theory than in practicality, owes itself to two gilded periods.

A bit like taking to the stage at the Sands Casino an hour after Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack have taken their leave.
Sunday games aren't always that popular at Easter Road. A bottom six clash against the second bottom team, served up after a televised Old Firm game, on the back of a defeat to the team at the bottom of the league has all the appeal of regurgitated Easter eggs.

A shining light in the fug of our disconsolate national game. A Scottish footballing success story that is helping to change the world.
The Daily Record reported yesterday on the progress of the Homeless World Cup since the idea first germinated - like all the best ideas in a pub - ten years ago.

Kilmarnock v Celtic 2011 20 April, 2011- 20/4/11 Final score:- Kilmarnock v Celtic 0-4 ( Kris Commons*2, Gary Hooper, Anthony Stokes) Celtic emulate Rangers' 4-0 win over Dundee United by thrashing Kilmarnock 4-0 away from home in the SPL. A brace from Kris Commons along with a goal each for Gary Hooper and Anthony Stokes.

When Liverpool named Steve Clarke as their first-team coach just hours after they had been knocked out of the FA Cup by Manchester United, there was barely a murmur of dissent from Reds fans, even though the experienced Scot had been so intrinsically linked with regular sparring partners Chelsea, both as a player and a coach.

The SPL scoots from the east end of Glasgow to Paisley when the Old Firm is done and dusted. How the other half live.
How the other have live.
Eleventh versus twelfth in the SPL sounds like a relegation clash and both teams will be treating it as such.
In the last few weeks though I think the fear of the drop has been lifted from these two sides.

Well, well, well. Going into this weekend's fixtures, I'd have been the last one to have predicted yet another managerial casualty. Hibs, about whom there's been plenty of paper talk pulled of a win and so kept Colin Calderwood's place in the Easter Road car park safe for another week. Clyde, well, they're fucked anyway but they've just appointed someone and besides, they pulled of a tremendous 3-3 against Elgin City.

News filters through that St Johnstone's fifth round clash with Partick Thistle has been postponed.
If only we had a January shut-down all these call offs and bad weather in February could be so easily avoided.
So only five games to enjoy today.
Hamilton v Dundee UnitedAn all SPL clash.

Last night's SPL results had ramifications for the teams battling it out at both ends of the table.
St Johnstone's 2-0 win over Hamilton means Hibs remain second bottom as they host third bottom St Mirren. Tonight's result at Easter Road could have a big, big influence on how the relegation battle eventually pans out.

Dundee United v HibsA Sunday kick off allows me to use today's match preview to sneak in what is now becoming a far too regular rant about the many deficiencies that currently haunt Hibs.
This one is slightly different though. It's the "sticking up for Colin Calderwood and finding hope for the future" post.

Hibernian have completed the signing of Icelandic youngster Victor Palsson on an 18-month contract from Liverpool.
Skysports.com revealed earlier this week that the 19-year-old midfielder was set to join Hibs after failing to make the breakthrough at Liverpool.
He made three appearances on loan at Dagenham & Redbridge back in November and Palsson is looking forward to his opportunity at Easter Road.

Hibernian vs Rangers January 26, 2011 Final score:- Hibs vs Rangers 0-2 ( Bougherra, Jelavic) Glasgow Rangers bounced back from their weekend loss to Hearts as they beat Hibernian 2-0 in the SPL on Wednesday night. Hibs vs Rangers 0-1 ( Madjid Bougherra 26′ goal) Hibs vs Rangers 0-2 ( Nikica Jelavic 35′ goal) Related [.