HIBERNIAN are back above their city neighbours in the Scottish Premiership table—once again, the basement boys, Hearts are in their beds, adrift at the bottom of the league, circling the murky whirlpool on the edge of the abyss.
Of course, my writing about that in this month’s newspaper will doubtless come back to bite me on Boxing Day, but that’s football.
David Gray has made Hibs a much better side of late, and his charges find themselves back in the more appropriate territory for Hibs that is mid-table. The manager and the players deserve some credit.
Much work need still be done, though, if the Hibees are to avoid what’s certain to be a bitter relegation battle this season, probably involving up to six teams. At time of writing, the Hibees have just picked up seven points from a possible 15—the previous five matches had yielded just three points.
It’s too early to say that Hibs have turned a corner, but performances of late have been much better and at times the team has shown some great fighting qualities—something sorely missing this term thus far.
The real tests of Gray’s leadership will come over the festive period, as the Cabbage face two huge challenges—winning the festive Edinburgh derby on Boxing Day and trying to beat Rangers on January 5, the latter to end Hibernian’s most miserable, pathetic, winless league run against a single team in the club’s entire history. If Gray can mastermind victories in these games he will, in the eyes of many, finally be a proper Hibs manager—the first such boss since Jack Ross, with the Hibees having been badly hamstrung by idiotic, bewildering managerial appointments since chief executive, Ben Kensell, arrived at the club in 2021, ushering in an era of apparent commercial success off the park mixed with joyless incompetence on it.
So, are Hibs finally getting it right? Well, with the help of the Black Knights, Garvan Stewart has joined the club as its new head of recruitment. Stewart is hailed by many in the game as something of a guru, so Hibs fans will be hoping that he can bring in some real quality players to the club and transform Hibs from a poor side with a large, mediocre squad into a decent side with a smaller, but higher quality player pool. His arrival at the club leaves question marks over the future of high-earning backroom staff like Malky Mackay and David Marshall, guys that many Hibs fans don’t believe offer anything positive or useful to the club, at all.
At the end of November, Hibs were humiliated 4-1 up at Dens Park by Dundee, badly spanked in a one-sided match in which Jordan Obita was sent-off. Nicky Cadden—easily the Hibees’ best player at the moment, scored in that match.
Next came a midweek match against high-flying Aberdeen at Easter Road, which ended in a thrilling 3-3 draw, Hibs snatching a point through a freakish Rocky Bushiri strike in the 96th minute, Cadden and Joe Newell were also on target in that game.
Four days later, Hibs were in Lanarkshire, recording a fairly easy 3-0 win over Motherwell at Fir Park, via goals from Junior Hoilett, Mykola Kukharevych and Josh Campbell, in what was easily the Hibees’ best performance of the season.
Next came a big test, a trip to face the near-untouchable Celtic in Glasgow. Celtic scored early through Engels, but the Hibees should really have been 3-1 up by half-time, spurning many first-half chances, the most frustrating of those being Kukharevych’s two failures in one-on-one situations against Kasper Schmeichel. These misses proved costly as the Celts scored two more in the second-half, through a Newell OG and a late Kyogo strike, so, what could easily have been a gallant victory for Hibs ended up as a déjà vu comprehensive defeat in Glasgow. The Hibees haven’t won at Celtic Park now for 15 years. There were, however, many positives to be taken from the match.
This positivity carried over into Hibs’ most recent match at home to Ross County. The Staggies took an early lead at a freezing Easter Road. Thankfully, the Hibees rallied and were level by half-time, thanks to a Dwight Gayle header. In the second half, Cadden had a penalty saved, but Hibs were awarded another spot-kick, which Élie Youan converted after 73 minutes. Campbell gave County the coup de grace in injury time to seal a fine 3-1 win.
Hibs have improved. If that improvement continues, then perhaps this season won’t be quite the utter disaster which it has looked like becoming, after all. We live and hope.
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