Is it all about money?
Williamson rounds off his monster Press Conference by querying current footballers motives

ONE OF THE ARGUMENTS PUT FORWARD BY BOBBY WILLIAMSONS' BACKERS over the past year is that the current Hibs team is not his and that the Hibs boss will turn it around when he is able to bring in his own players, players that can play the formations and types of football that he wants to play.  However, Williamson is not one to subscribe to that view himself, believing that he must stand up and be counted like everybody else if he makes a mistake.

"This year's my team.  I'm the one picking the team.  I've never criticised the players publicly and I've never said is somebody else's fault.  If we don't get results, I'll take my fair share of criticism for that.  Sometimes it's out of your hands.  If you're conceding goals early parts of games or just after half time you can say "the manager's team talk wasn't great and he never motivated them enough to go out and do that", but that's not been the problem.  It would have been worse if we were 2-0 down in the first half and never got back into a game and not looked like scoring but that's not been the case, it's always been the latter stages we've conceded.  We've always been in a game."  With Hibs conceding an alarming number of goals in the closing minutes, and seconds, of games over the last few months, it's not surprising that the fans are getting frustrated and fed up with the same finales week after week, a fact that Williamson is well aware of.

"There's nothing worse, it's demoralising for everybody, the fans included, especially the fans.  They pay good money then they're seeing us throwing it away.  There's nothing worse when you've worked hard all week, and I mean all week.  We work very hard during the course of the week and we work hard on a Saturday then for the last five or six minutes we've lost it!  As I've said it's soul destroying and sore to take."  Last week, Hibs managed to reverse this trend with a last gasp winner at Tannadice after a defensive error that must have only come from watching videos of the Easter Road side in action.  While maybe being pleased inside, the Hibs boss was reluctant to show it in the dugout that afternoon.  "I don't know if anybody noticed but I wasn't really doing cartwheels after we scored that last minute goal against Dundee United last week because I knew exactly how they were feeling.  It's a dog eat dog world and maybe I should have been jumping about but being so close to them and knowing what they're going through, fighting to stay in the League, it's sore to take and we've experienced that more than anybody this season."

The reactions of the Hibs fans since Wednesday's revelations by John O'Neil have taken Williamson aback.  While other clubs seem to have gone through this pain with relatively little bad publicity, the club seemed to have had to deal with this very much in the public eye, something that Williamson was not keen to do at this stage.  "As I said, I don't think there's any surprises there.  We tried to address the problems last year. Players were called in to talk about their contracts and their situations and it was well documented then.  This week, it seems to have hit the fan a bit!"  Hit the fan is probably the right expression to use, but could Hibs have dealt with this in a better manner than they have?  "I don't know, I couldn't have gone about the business any other way than what I did.  I don't feel that I have secretive, I don't feel that I have been trying to keep things back from the fans.  John came out and said what he said and maybe that brought it a bit to the fore but we hadn't dealt with everybody else at the club at the time so we couldn't send out a statement to let the fans know what was happening."

Arpinon - praying for first team football somewhere next season (sns)

The biggest criticism of the club over the past weeks has been the lack of concrete information with regards to who will be coming and going this summer.  As Bobby continually stated last Friday, he was keen to communicate the extent of the 'exits' but as he was still trying to discuss this with the players, he wasn't in a position to communicate it at that time.  One such example of this was Frederic Arpinon.  In John O'Neil's statement, he mentioned the French midfielder and the fact that he wouldn't be playing again for Hibs also.  However, as Williamson pointed out, that's maybe not strictly the case!  "That's ongoing as well, that's not finished with!  Freddy's talking to Rod at this moment in time and there's nothing been concluded so I don't think it's in anybody's interests to talk about things until they're concluded.  John's brought it to the fore and we're talking about it now."  But what is the situation with Arpinon.  May Hibs fans would like to see him get another few games under his belt as he is seen to be one of the few players willing to get the ball on the deck and play football as opposed to the long ball game.  "Freddy's situation was that I spoke to him, he asked "Am I in your plans?" and I said to him "You're a very good player but you've not played many games for one reason or another" and he is on decent money and I thought that I can't guarantee a place next year.  I'm trying to strengthen the team and the only way to do that is to obviously to let players go.  I said "It's up to yourself" so he said "I'll speak to Mr Petrie".  He's been speaking to him and it's ongoing, so John shouldn't have mentioned Freddy maybe.  I don't know why he did."

On Friday morning, it became public knowledge that Grant Brebner had rejected the three-year contract that he'd been offered by the club via a message on the official Hibs website.  Although he hadn't featured regularly in the early part of the season, Brebner has now established himself in the heart of the Hibs midfield and in Bobby Williamson's plans for the immediate future.  But it's not Williamson that deals with the contracts and the Hibs boss had to be informed of Brebner's decision by the press assembled on Friday lunchtime.  "Maybe that's ongoing as well, maybe they're still going to be talking.  If he's turned it down, it's difficult to talk about players contracts because they can be ongoing.  I mean you might turn down a contract because of some wee fundamental thing and you want to force your way, and it can be resolved very quickly."

Was there a realisation now starting to creep through Scottish football that the money just isn't there at the levels it used to be?  Williamson seems to think so anyway and used two words that he's used a lot over the preceding months, 'transitional period'.  "It's definitely a transitional period.  There's some very talented players out there that think they can get much more money and it'll take time to settle down.  It might be not be this year, it might not be next year but it'll take time and there's going to be a lot of players out there and a lot of them will want to play for Hibs.  I hope we can get the better ones in here!  That's always be the aim and we'll see what it brings."  With the money not being available at Easter Road or indeed elsewhere other than at the Old Firm, although it's not as great there as it used to be either, would the Hibs boss be able to bring in the players he wanted to bring in?  "I see that Steve Paterson is saying that he's not going to be able to get his number one targets in.  I'm not going to say that because it's going to be detrimental to the guy I do bring in.  How's he going to feel?  That's not very motivating but I'm not going to have a go at Steve Paterson about that!" 

Brebner - contract rejected but talks still ongoing? (sns)

While not giving any clues on who he wants to bring in, Williamson was also unwilling to give any figures on how many he wants to shift out and bring in to the club although it's very clear he has a target figure that he'd ideally like to work to.  "That's not been clarified yet until I find out who's going to be leaving but we'll try and work around the figure of 24 first team squad players and sixteen kids which will take us to a total of 40.  The sixteen kids will not be able to supplement the first team initially, that's for sure."

The realisation that money is not there these days is something that the clubs have certainly found out, with a few finding out to their cost, but have the players really taken it in yet?  Williamson doesn't really think so and is starting to question players reasons for being in the game.  "I think they're starting to find that.  There's always the scenario that somebody will offer them a wee bit more.  I'm looking at the fact, is it all about money?  "If you want to be a football player, is it all about money?  Do you not want to work in a good environment?  Do you want to enjoy your football and drive on and hopefully achieve things?"  That's why I question players when they sit on big contracts at other clubs and they're not playing football.  We've seen it at other clubs before when they're just picking up the money.  That money will not be there so I think they should be trying to enjoy their football again.  They can still make a decent living out of it and if they excel, somebody will come in and make big offers for them from the Premiership, abroad or Rangers and Celtic!"

Let's hope that those players who are under contract to Hibs for next season and have been told that they aren't part of the Hibs boss' plans think like that too and move on for their own career's sake as well as for the good of Hibernian FC.