BOBBY WILLIAMSON HAS STATED MORE THAN ONCE that he would like to have a winger at Easter Road, and if some Hibs.net spies have it right then he might well be close to having just that with former Aberdeen and Newcastle United man Stephen Glass being reported to be out and about in Edinburgh in the company of Gary Smith this week.

Given that nobody down Easter Road way will give any indication about possible signing targets until these targets actually put pen to paper, this of course is all pure conjecture - but it’s fun all the same!  So let’s look at what we do know, or at least what we think we know!  Spotted at the surgery of the Hibernian club doctor yesterday, Stephen Glass, who after a chat with said doctor is whisked away by Gary Smith.  Well if not Stephen some mate of Gary’s that looked like him at least!

Stephen Glass - in the Capital?

So let’s assume it was Stephen, what one wonders was he doing there?  Might just have been using his mate’s doctor to check out an upset stomach of course.  Or might he have been here for another reason?  After a couple of years at Newcastle United, when he went on a £650,000 transfer from Aberdeen, 26-year-old Glass moved to Watford on a Bosman deal in July 2001.  Injury impeded his progress at Watford but Glass still did enough from the left-wing to gather a few more fans in the south, but not enough it seems to retain his employment there as Watford revealed back in March that he would be free to go in the summer.

A cracker of a goal which helped Watford into the FA Cup Semi-Finals attracted some attention including that from Glass’s former employers at Pittodrie, Aberdeen said to be monitoring the situation closely.  The stumbling block for the Dons of course would be the wage demands of a player used to better things than those currently on offer in the SPL, but then this summer as every player and his agent will tell you, beggars can most certainly no longer be choosers!

An interest in Glass could certainly help to explain the manner in which Hibs have moved to end John O’Neil’s stay at the club.  The reported £3,000 a game appearance money being picked up by O’Neil would go a long way, if not all the way, towards securing a player of Glass’s quality who perhaps knows that he cannot command the £10k+ he might have started negotiations on when joining Watford just two years ago.