Hibs have lost more than just their pride... they’ve lost their identity

Fenlon believes his former club’s problems extend much deeper than the dugout and boardroom

THE commute started on the outskirts of Dublin, but the radio was tuned to BBC Scotland as Pat Fenlon drove to the RTE television studios last Saturday lunchtime. En route to one of the regular broadcasting gigs that have helped fill his time since he departed Hibs last November, the Irishman was preoccupied not with the English Premier League preview show in which he was participating but with events at Easter Road as his old team sought to avoid slipping into a relegation play-off.

At first the commentary was encouraging as Terry Butcher’s team launched an early onslaught on the Kilmarnock defence.

‘The place was crackling and you could hear the expectancy in the crowd as they tried to get the first goal,’ recounts Fenlon. ‘And then, after 20 minutes, it just kind of tailed off. You could hear the crowd getting tetchy.

‘I love Easter Road — it’s the best ground in the league outside of Parkhead and when it’s full there’s a brilliant atmosphere. But maybe it’s too big for what they have. How you get around that, I don’t know.’

On the balance of play, Hibs didn’t deserve to lose the game but there was an inevitability — all too familiar to Fenlon — about the Kris Boyd goal that sealed Kilmarnock’s survival and plunged Hibs into the nightmare scenario of a two-legged play-off against either Falkirk or Hamilton Accies.

The fact he still bothers to tune in shows Fenlon cares but publicly he has said little since giving up the reins earlier this season.

When Sportsmail meets him in the Irish capital, he has plenty to say and defends himself vigorously against the accusations that he left behind a set of players who were not up to the job.

Equally, there’s no overt criticism of Butcher. Indeed, he urges the Hibs board to stand by their man, even if the club is relegated.

Fenlon takes full responsibility for two of the worst results in Hibs’ history but insists there is something fundamentally wrong with the club that extends far beyond the manager’s office. He reckons the stadium may be part of it, while a dysfunctional youth set-up and overworked chairman haven’t helped.

Fundamentally, though, he believes there is no clear sense of identity at the club.

‘There is a lot more to it than just changing the team or changing the manager,’ he says. ‘I think Hibs need to find themselves again. I’m not sure what the problem is but it’s going to take a long time. I know the supporters don’t want to hear that but I think it will.

‘It’s a fabulous football club but there is something wrong. The club needs to find its identity again and go back to its roots.’

Butcher’s sterling work at Inverness got him the nod as Fenlon’s replacement but a more direct style of play seemed to force the players into their shell.

Rumours abound of an unhappy dressing room and resistance to the old-school methods deployed by the former England captain and his deputy Maurice Malpas.

‘I’m not going to criticise Terry because I think the worst thing Hibs could do now is change again,’ adds Fenlon. ‘I hope the club stand by him. It needs stability. The key thing is to let the manager do his job.

‘Everybody works in different ways. I know how hard it is to be a manager, so I wouldn’t be critical of anyone’s methods.

‘If the club believed he was the right man six months ago, then that shouldn’t change.’

Last weekend’s defeat was followed by a small demonstration outside Easter Road in which fans called for the departures of both Butcher and chairman Rod Petrie.

For now, Butcher remains locked into a contract until 2016, but Petrie is to cede executive power at Easter Road to outgoing Motherwell chief executive Leeann Dempster, who will fill a similar role in Leith.

In a statement issued last week, Petrie apologised for the club’s ‘dismal’ position in the league and promised a ‘wind of change’ was set to blow through the club.

‘I don’t know Leeann Dempster but her record at Motherwell is good and the arrival of a chief executive who is there on a day-to-day basis working with club and manager is a good thing,’ insists Fenlon.

‘I had plenty of arguments with Rod but I couldn’t be critical of the man. He is so hard-working and wants the club to progress.

‘When Scott Lindsay left, the chairman stepped into the breach but it’s difficult for him to do it all. The appointment will be a good thing, definitely.’

Fenlon raised his dissatisfaction at the state of Hibs’ youth academy, currently headed up by Bill Hendry, at the club’s last AGM just a few weeks before his departure. The issue continues to rankle. ‘The youth side is the one side of the club I couldn’t change,’ he states. ‘James McDonaugh is brilliant with the Under-20s, a real good coach, and there is a lot of good stuff going on underneath that.

‘But it needs direction and better leadership. Our recruitment policy is not good enough — we need to be more aggressive, more competitive with Hearts and even some of the Junior teams.

‘It’s about restructuring the club. It is fragmented, it is disjointed and it needs to be brought together. You can only have the club going in the right direction when everyone is pulling the same way.’

THE use of the words ‘we’ and ‘our’ is startling. Fenlon’s inability to detach himself fully from Hibs extends through his protective instinct towards the players he left behind. In strong terms he refutes the charge — used by some observers to absolve Butcher of any blame for the team’s plight — that the quality of player he brought to Easter Road is responsible for taking the club to the brink of relegation. Without last season’s player of the year Leigh Griffiths, he admits his team lacked penetration, but he felt confident in the quality of player he had recruited in defence and, particularly, midfield had raised the overall standard.

‘I don’t buy this theory that the players are not good enough,’ he maintains. ‘I don’t care what anyone says, that’s just not true. When I left, people said there was a good squad of players that just needed a proper manager!

‘A few weeks before I left, Owain Tudur Jones was in the Wales squad, Ryan McGivern was with the Northern Ireland squad and Kevin Thomson had been called up by Scotland.

‘Others may disagree but outside of Celtic, I believe Ben Williams is the best keeper in the league.

‘Michael Nelson is a proven centre-half and Paul Heffernan a proven goalscorer. Liam Craig had started the season well, too.’

Then there’s James Collins. Signed as Griffiths’ replacement, Collins has been held up as the great folly of Fenlon’s reign, not least because a

£200,000 transfer fee was quoted when the deal was concluded with Swindon Town, for whom he scored 18 goals last season.

‘James is a good player, decent and proven at the level he played at,’ says Fenlon. ‘I think he will come good. He just needs someone beside him.

‘He was under the microscope with regard to replacing Leigh and that’s probably a bit unfair as James is a different type of player, who probably relies more on service.

‘Leigh works more of his own goals and plays off instinct, whereas James relies on service from wide, good balls into him.

‘Alex Harris was a big loss because he ended last season with great momentum then picked up a serious injury. Losing him and Paul Cairney from the wide areas was an issue.’

Fenlon describes himself as ‘surprised and bitterly disappointed’ that the team should find itself in such a dark hole — when the 45-year-old resigned last November, he cited his frustration that he could not take the team any higher than the safe mid-table berth they occupied at that stage, just a point behind a much-praised Dundee United team.

‘I had another year’s contract. People thought I’d be gone at the end of the season but I had a rolling contract,’ he adds. ‘We were fifth and people weren’t happy. I looked at it and thought if the expectation is that high, then maybe someone else needs to come in.

‘At that point, I thought there was no way they could end up in trouble. I felt we’d be fighting to remain where we were — fifth or sixth which, for a club like Hibs, is not a big success.’

Upon resigning, Fenlon insists he took his decision to go following a 2-0 home defeat to Aberdeen, but he didn’t actually quit until after Hibs lost to a young Hearts side in the League Cup the following midweek — their second derby defeat of the season.

Fenlon, who had been given the job on the back of five League of Ireland titles shared between Shelbourne and Bohemians, had never properly settled in Edinburgh since succeeding Colin Calderwood in late 2011, a point borne out by the fact he never moved his family over from Dublin.

FREQUENTLY spiky in the presence of the media, Fenlon may have fallen in love with Hibs but he felt like an outsider. He reveals: ‘Here’s the thing that annoyed me. When I came in, we were 11th. The following season, we finished seventh with more points than Dundee United, the team in sixth.

‘People said it wasn’t an improvement. If you’re 11th one year and seventh the next, getting to two Scottish Cup Finals in a row, surely it’s some sort of improvement?’

The trouble for Fenlon is that he presided over those two horrendously damaging results — the 5-1 Cup Final defeat to Hearts in 2012 and the 7-0 home reverse to Swedes Malmo in this season’s Europa League qualifiers.

‘I understand people looking at those results and I held my hand up after both.

‘The Cup Final for me was worse than Malmo, because of where it was, the club it was and being hammered by our biggest rivals. It wasn’t nice,’ he admits.

‘Maybe I picked the wrong team on both occasions. Maybe I should have gone a bit more defensive.

‘But people really have to look at the full picture. Everyone rams Hearts down my throat but we were the first Hibs team in nine years to go a full season unbeaten in the derby.

‘There’s stuff I’ve got to learn as a manager. I probably could have handled the media better and, if I get another job, I have to put that into practice.

‘I’ve no problem with the fans or even most of the media. I think ex-players who haven’t ever managed themselves were the problem — they gave us no credit whatsoever.

‘That’s maybe down to where I come from and the league I’d managed in previously. I can understand that a little bit but my stats as a manager at Hibs are as good as most. Maybe only Alex McLeish, John Collins and Tony Mowbray are any better than me.

‘I was privileged to manage Hibs, to be honest. It’s a great club and I’ve no regrets whatsoever.’

Fenlon i ntends to tune i n to Wednesday’s first leg, which will be played on an artificial surface regardless of whether Falkirk or Hamilton prevail in the play-off semi-final this afternoon. Then, next Sunday, it’s Easter Road for a day that could potentially be disastrous for the club.

‘I will be desperate for Hibs to win,’ adds Fenlon. ‘I think the players have to stand up.

‘I brought a lot of those players to the club and they’ve got to stand up and have pride in themselves and make sure the club is secure going forward, whether they are there or not.

‘I know the circumstances and it will be a disaster if they go down. Finishing 11th and not having a cup final — that’s a lot of money out of the budget. To go down would cost a hell of a lot more, so these are big games.

‘I know Hibs fans are disappointed but this is a real time to rally around and make sure they get through it.’