Friday, November 22, 2024

‘Something fundamentally wrong’ at Hibs

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[BBC]

BBC Scotland’s chief sportswriter Tom English has been answering your questions on Hibs.

Anon asked: Do we continue with David Gray and hope he turns the situation around or, as I suspect the board will do, throw him to the wolves? We can’t afford to give this job to someone with no managerial experience. I know he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but Neil Lennon is available.

Tom answered: Bottom of the league. Eight points after 12 games. It’s disgraceful really. For a club as big and as terrific as Hibs, this is just unacceptable.

Compare what they were like under Lennon, when they were playing good football, scoring tremendous goals, giving the Old Firm a bloody nose from time to time. That was a different Hibs.

On the Lennon question, I don’t know about that one, but the Lennon era can certainly be seen as the halcyon days compared to this rubbish.

Everybody’s to blame at Hibs. The players, the manager, sporting director Malky Mackay, the board of directors, everyone. The recruitment has been terrible for a long number of years.

So it’s not just on Gray, although he’s carrying the can right now. It’s on the decisions that have been made for years, decisions that were made in the summer. This team has cried out for competent, not really good, but just competent centre-halves for a long time.

Mackay has come in in the summer. He’s in charge of recruitment among other things, so we’re told. He is the guy bringing the players in. He signs Marvin Ekpiteta and Warren O’Hora, signs the goalkeeper Josef Bursik, and somehow makes them worse. They’re just not good enough. Why have they been signed?

And then you could extend that around the team. They are in an awful, awful state, and Gray might pay for it with his job. Another one through the revolving Easter Road door.

And what might happen? Well, Mackay might come in as the manager. And we start again. You know, there’s something really fundamentally wrong with that club. They are on a vicious cycle of making terrible decisions and until they start making good decisions, this is just going to repeat on a cycle, this Groundhog Day.

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