Lennon’s ‘the right man’ to fire Hibs back up

ANTHONY STOKES has endorsed the union of Neil Lennon and Hibernian as a sure-fire recipe for Championship success this season.

Stokes helped Hibs make history by scoring twice in the club’s Scottish Cup Final victory over Rangers in May and he has backed Alan Stubbs’ successor to bring more joy to Leith by leading the club back to the top flight.

Stokes said: ‘Lenny’s definitely the right man. He knows Scottish football inside out. He knows the quality in that team and I’d be very surprised if they don’t go up this year under him.

‘I just think he will go in there and get the best out of players. He did it with me at Celtic and someone like Jason Cummings will thrive under him. He’s a very good man manager and he will know how to get the best out of Jason.

‘He is good with the squad as a whole, keeping everything intact and everyone in line but on a personal level he knows when to put an arm round the shoulder and when to give you a bollocking.

‘Jason has signed and they also have Grant Holt in there. John McGinn is still there, so there is quality all over that team. For me, they are favourites to go up by a mile.’ Stokes concedes that the goalscoring form in his loan spell did not match the expectations of either himself or Stubbs, and was frustrated at not being able to help the club join second-tier winners Rangers in ascending to the Premiership. ‘I was having a tough year,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t in the Celtic team and I had a couple of personal issues at home, so I didn’t really want to move. I didn’t want to go down south and take six or seven weeks to settle in somewhere. I wanted to go to a club I knew. I knew the background, the infrastructure and also some of the players.

‘It’s hard to show your ability in the Scottish Championship because it really is a physical game, but I knew Hibs would have a lot of possession and try to play football. It was really disappointing because I thought we would go up.

‘I thought I could go there and score more goals. That’s football sometimes — it took me an awful long time to get going and it was a tough year all round.

‘The League Cup Final against Ross County was another disappointment — I felt we deserved to win that day but it wasn’t to be.

‘To finish the way I did, I suppose everything else was forgotten about. With the backroom staff there, Stubbs and those players, I think the club deserved to win something.’

Stokes says he felt his game coming together in the build-up to the Final and at Hampden everything clicked as he produced a man-of-the-match performance.

‘It’s the old saying — it’s how you finish the season that people remember,’ he smiled. ‘To have a day like that, with the Cup Final and all the history, it was special.’