ONE HECK AT OF A MESS EASTER ROAD
BARRING the typical new-manager bounce he got when he walked through the door last season, Hibs have regressed quite dramatically — and in double-quick time — under Paul Heckingbottom.
In the space of only a few months, they’ve gone from being a solid top-six team to one who now look like relegation fodder.
It’s quite a feat when you think about it. It’s only taken one transfer window for things to come crashing down in spectacular fashion.
The derby defeat to Hearts yesterday illustrated just how poor their recruitment was over the summer when they brought ten new players into the club.
What a damning indictment it was, then, for half of them — Tom James, Adam Jackson, Joe Newell, Glenn Middleton and Chris Doidge — to start on the bench for a game of this magnitude.
We know Middleton has good potential because we’ve seen it at Rangers. Scott Allan is another one who is a really tidy player on his day. He’ll come good eventually.
As for the rest of them, it’s beginning to look like Heckingbottom has signed a job-lot of players who just patently aren’t up to scratch.
Doidge, in particular, is a really strange one. Hibs paid the best part of £350,000 to take him from Forest Green Rovers — yet he’s failed to score a single league goal so far.
He can’t even get a game at the moment. He’s started the last two league games parked on the bench. Not what you expect when a club pays good money for a player.
The buck will obviously stop with Heckingbottom as manager, but fans should also be asking questions about chief executive Leeann Dempster in all of this.
It looks like she has got this appointment horribly wrong — and fans made their feelings abundantly clear outside Easter Road after the game.
It’s far too late now, but there must be a part of Dempster that wishes she could turn the clock back and do things differently.
She wouldn’t be human if she didn’t regret the way she handled things with Neil Lennon in January. Remember, the omnishambles of non-sacking, non-resignation exit.
There was no need for him to leave the club. But Dempster was subsequently forced to pay up Lennon’s contract, while suffering the embarrassment of admitting publicly that there had been no wrongdoing on his part.
It all goes back to the infamous bust-up between Florian Kamberi and the Hibs coaching staff. It’s clear Dempster made the wrong decision and backed the wrong man.
She chose to back the striker over her manager at the time. Let’s be honest, Kamberi hasn’t exactly been setting the heather alight since then, has he?
In the 21 league games he has played since Lennon left the club, Kamberi has scored four goals. He’s just not delivering.
The reality is that Hibs are in a mess of Dempster’s making. She sparked the chain of events which has led them to where they are now.
The team I watched yesterday was unrecognisable from the one which came within a whisker of finishing second in the league under Lennon barely 18 months ago.
I wouldn’t have played for Hibs if it hadn’t been for the fact Lennon was in charge. That’s the attraction he holds as a manager. He’s an outstanding motivator and players want to play for him.
Dempster didn’t appreciate just how good things were when he was manager. Yeah, there was a sticky patch of results last season — but nothing compared to the hole they’re in now.
The style of football at the moment looks awful. As soon as Hearts equalised yesterday, Hibs hit the panic button. Their backsides just collapsed.
Then, after Hearts went in front, Hibs just resorted to lottery football and punting the ball into the box, hoping for something to happen.
Things don’t get any easier. They travel to Kilmarnock in the quarter-finals of the Betfred Cup on Wednesday night before facing Celtic and Aberdeen in their next two league games.
Whether or not Heckingbottom survives that long, only time will tell. But supposing they do sack him, that only solves part of the problem. They’d still have all of his players on the books. Any new manager would be lumbered with these players he’s brought to the club.
As for Hearts, they’re certainly not out of the woods yet despite yesterday’s win. I wrote in this column last week that victory in the derby would only paper over the cracks — and I stand by that.
Yeah, credit to Craig Levein for the way he changed the game in the second half, but it doesn’t change much in the bigger picture.
So, you’ll have some Hearts fans feeling that victory was actually the worst thing that could have happened to them if it prolongs Levein’s tenure at the club.
While, on the other hand, some Hibs fans will be dancing with delight after the defeat if it forces Dempster’s hand into making a change.
Strange old game, isn’t it?