No more upheaval - just now
Hibs can't afford to start making major personnel changes at the moment says Keith Small...

While I can understand the frustrations of the fans at the moment, it is still my view that Bobby Williamson is the best man for the job as our manager. I honestly do not think that you can judge a manager in terms of progress on the park when he has had to dismantle a squad and then assemble a new one from football’s bargain basement.

As I have said countless times, and I am no blindly loyal devotee of Williamson, and of course I do not think he is perfect. Like everyone else he has his faults, and like everyone else he has, and will again in the future make mistakes. But what are the alternatives, John 'Yogi' Hughes? He is one season into a managerial career, and has so far achieved some pretty indifferent results. Gordon Strachan? Does anyone seriously think that he would even entertain the possibility of becoming our manager at this stage in his career, because I certainly do not?

Pressure building on Williamson and the Hibs board  (sns)

That is just one reason why I think that Williamson is the best available man for the job. The second reason is that if you consider the way in which he has had to get rid of so many players, and had his budget reduced by a huge amount, there must surely be a strong argument for saying that to simply stand still in terms of league placings, to tread water while we undergo such radical off-field upheaval is an achievement in itself. It is this point that brings me to what I consider to be the crux of the argument.

When the ugly prospect of selling the Holy Ground and moving to Straiton emerged, Hibernians across the board were united in their disapproval, even disgust at the very idea. Staying at our home would be worth making financial sacrifices, almost any price was deemed acceptable if it meant we did not have to move. Well this period of transition and cost cutting that we are currently going through is that price that we were all willing to pay.  Would we rather the board had stuck their head in the sand and continued to pay wages beyond our means for the sake of short-term gain? Instead we have made most of the hard decisions, and are currently enduring the sacrifices that are necessary to get the club back on track. And I do believe that we will reap the rewards.

Clubs like Livingston, Dunfermline, Dundee and Dundee Utd cannot keep spending the way in which they are/were. And hopefully, when they make the hard decisions that they inevitably will have to make, we will be a couple of years ahead of them. Our young players will have a season or two of experience, and hopefully we will be in a position to augment their talent with the experience that we are currently crying out for. If this was to prove to be the case, I firmly believe that Williamson would prove his worth by leading us up the table. Whether he will be give this time, I don’t know, but I think the last thing that this club needs at the moment is another financial blow in terms of compensation payments to offset much of the good work that has been done, and another period of upheaval and instability. There has been far too much of that Easter Road in the last few years.

While it might not seem like it with some of the performances of late, the club is making progress and building for the future, and I think that at a time when there is no outstanding alternative around, we would be risking all of this to take yet another risk. A risk that I feel the club can ill afford.