£3m in, £0 out, and the most expensive Board in the league...

[Phil D. Rolls]

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That was 3 seasons ago and from being in a superb position to capatilise they have failed (abysmally?).

I agree things are not what we would want, but it's the degree of disatisfaction that puzzles me. I don't think we have been abysmal, compared to other clubs outside the OF we are pretty much on a par.

I can see where the frustration of fans comes from, we had great players, and we sold them for a good price. I think that the Mowbray years were the blip, when you consider Hibs over the last couple of decades. At least we capitalised, financially - we were never going to build on that team.

We were between a rock and a hard place, we had to get the money for those players, yet we knew we couldn't replace them. I don't know how we can put together a good team by spending cash, where are the players that would do the job, and what would they cost.

Realistically we are competing for the best of the dross, when the likes of PNE can pay 5 times our wages. I'm not saying I'm happy, but we have to be realistic.

[Woody1985]

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Ok we've got Rod Petrie and Scott Lindsay as executive Chairman and Managing Director respectively. Both have a combined cost to the club of 400K.

I'm sure these guys are both very efficient and hard working individuals behind the scenes...

But are we really getting value for money at 400K on our relatively small turnover?

Just where is their leadership? They are like two mute men... Just whenever do they communicate with the support? Is leadership not about leading from the front? Just where is it? Has anyone of the two said anything on last seasons underachievement? Has any of the two said a damned thing about their hopes and aspirations for the new season?

The irony in all of this is that our owner Sir Tom Farmer became a well known personality because he was leading his then company Kwik-Fit from the front. Even to the extent that his face and words were on all marketing and advertising materials.

With 400K leadership duo Rod Petrie and Scott Lindsay we have no face and no words.

Do you really want Petrie / Lindsay on your advertising materials? Surely you'd rather have a star player? Can you imagine Man United having the Glazier boy floating around all the time saying, right supporters, we're gonna sign big money players and compete with the best teams in the world every year. The fans would laugh their ***** off.

However, I can see your point re the direction but I think that their actions speak louder than words. The fans got what we wanted last year, spent some money on Deeks and got rid of Mixu. We now have Yogi who was wanted by a fair few.

We're in a recession and we don't have lots of money to throw around. I appreciate you'd only like a proportion of it spent. However, if you take a common thing from a personal life and try to compare it...

Joe Bloggs is Savings up for a car (stand) and is only £1,000 away from the one he wants to buy. Does Joe go and buy himself a new TV (player) for £400 because he has £3,000 in the bank already. The TV isn't going to drastically improve his lifestyle (a 200/300k player isn't going to get us far IMO) and because he's continually paying for cover (wages) in case it breaks down it's even more of a drain on his resources. Therefore, Joe being £1,000 away is suddenly £1,500 away and the car is no longer viable because the price has gone up / already been sold (planning permission expires).

Get the stand built, chip away at the mortgage on the other one and I'm confident that we'll have a rock solid foundation to challenge the OF in 5/10 years time. With everything in place we'll have the most investable club within Scottish football and we might just get some multi millionaire coming in to finance players.

I know people don't want to wait and neither do I. However, can you imagine the joy of your team pushing for the league title and CL because of the way it has been run for 10/15 years? Hopefully I'll still be around.

[snooky]

Half tongue in cheek - if we put all the Scot/Eng/Wales teams in a Brit pot, do you think we could compete in the BucksFizz league? If so, more to the point, would we get the same dosh as say the likes of PNE?

[Woody1985]

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Half tongue in cheek - if we put all the Scot/Eng/Wales teams in a Brit pot, do you think we could compete in the BucksFizz league? If so, more to the point, would we get the same dosh as say the likes of PNE?

I think we'd be league one with Rangers/Celtic Championship level. I think we'd probably struggle to get out of that level TBH. I think we may occassionally flit betweend Championship, League One and League Two.

It would also mean the end to our national teams.

[hibees_green]

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I agree things are not what we would want, but it's the degree of disatisfaction that puzzles me......Realistically we are competing for the best of the dross.

I agree with the reality of what you describe but the disatifaction doesn't puzzle me as for the last two year we have failed to compete with the best of the dross when we are in a position that we should have.

Futhermore, it's difficult to see any actions that are being taken that are likely to change this.

[wee 162]

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As an example of this, recall when Celtic came in for Thomson and Brown with a £2 million bid.

Petrie forced Rangers and Celtic to pay £6.5 in total for the pair.

The likes of Whittaker and Murphy were also sold at realistic prices rather than the nominal £200,000 fees that other clubs would have sold them for.

Hibs have traded themselves out of an impossible position circa 1990. Then they were virtually bust, had a crumbling stadium needing massive spending to keep a safety certificate.

Now the last section of the stadium is about to be completed, a brand new training facility has been opened, and the club have arguably the strongest financial base of any team in Scotland (bar Celtic?).

The training ground and the new East Stand are both essential if Hibs are to progress.

All this has impacted on performance. Hibs have found themselves outbid for players by the likes of Dunfermline, Dundee, Livingston, Motherwell, etc. Where are they now?

Hearts were in a much better position than Hibs in 1990 but have generally fouled things up under successive regimes and are now probably £40 million in debt with no realistic plans to replace the rotting asbestos riddled main stand and no real aspirations than to stay one jump ahead of the liquidator.

Is that what people want?

That's an interesting take on it. The first time that the massively high price for the two of them was mentioned it was by Collins who said £7m for the pair of them.

Which was laughed at by the media, and more than a few in our support as well, as I remember it.

We got fair value for the two of them imo. But I don't particularly think that was down to Petrie, I think it was down to the manager at the time valuing them correctly. If Petrie knew the value of players then imo the sale of O'Connor was crap afaic since I felt he was sold for under his value at a time which was nonsensical. Did he have a pit stop on the road to Damascus in the intervening 8 months?

[Mibbes Aye]

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I agree things are not what we would want, but it's the degree of disatisfaction that puzzles me. I don't think we have been abysmal, compared to other clubs outside the OF we are pretty much on a par.

I can see where the frustration of fans comes from, we had great players, and we sold them for a good price. I think that the Mowbray years were the blip, when you consider Hibs over the last couple of decades. At least we capitalised, financially - we were never going to build on that team.

We were between a rock and a hard place, we had to get the money for those players, yet we knew we couldn't replace them. I don't know how we can put together a good team by spending cash, where are the players that would do the job, and what would they cost.

Realistically we are competing for the best of the dross, when the likes of PNE can pay 5 times our wages. I'm not saying I'm happy, but we have to be realistic.

Well-reasoned post.

We've gradually built up the player spend over the last while, even though our focus has been on reducing the debt and infrastructure.

We increased the wage budget a few times, we gave Fletcher a new deal rather than sell him (but eventually had to bow to the inevitable), likewise knocked back money for Beuzelin and turned down money for Jones that seems better than what we eventually let him go for.

Key players. That the Board backed the manager over, and hung onto.

Ho-hum.

Still not heard back from anyone who knows of a rival who had 400K to spend on securing Deeks on the last day of last season. We had it. And we did it.

Hibs are actually pretty good, given the constraints we operate under.

[jgl07]

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I don't want to go & look at a nice complete ground, I want to see a strong team on the park. And that is the fundamental reason I don't go along every week; the priorities are all wrong...
And how long do we patiently wait, 10, 20, 30 years?

"What childish innocence it is to present impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!"

This was written by Frederick Engels in 1874 and is highly relevant here!

[matty_f]

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Well-reasoned post.

We've gradually built up the player spend over the last while, even though our focus has been on reducing the debt and infrastructure.

We increased the wage budget a few times, we gave Fletcher a new deal rather than sell him (but eventually had to bow to the inevitable), likewise knocked back money for Beuzelin and turned down money for Jones that seems better than what we eventually let him go for.

Key players. That the Board backed the manager over, and hung onto.

Ho-hum.

Still not heard back from anyone who knows of a rival who had 400K to spend on securing Deeks on the last day of last season. We had it. And we did it.

Hibs are actually pretty good, given the constraints we operate under.

The increase in spend is constantly overlooked by some people on here, IMHO.

The way I see it is that Hibs are going about things in the best possible way to 'ensure' a successful future (obviously you can't guarantee success, but we can do as much as we can to try).

There will be a point in the not so distant future, where we'll sell another top player, the money will come into the club, and the board will look at what to spend it on. We'll have a stand, and with it a complete, modern stadium; we'll have as good a training centre as we could hope for - a base for excellence for Hibs players of all levels; and we'll have the team.

The training centre and the stadium running costs won't increase substantially, there will be no more capital projects to spend the money on, so that will leave the team.

At which point we'll start to keep our good players longer, we'll start to attract better players to the club, in fact we'll be in a great position because there are very few clubs that can say that. We'll be able to spend where others cannot.

As Mibbes said - we've already managed to flex a bit of muscle in bringing Deeks back at a time where other clubs were reluctant to spend.

Yogi said in his Hibs TV interview earlier this week, that Hibs are widely seen as being the best at what they do in the majority of areas looked at. He said the next thing is to make the first team the best as well.

Yogi was spot on. We're a tremendously well run club, very well respected by our peers.

To close, I'll draw a comparison with my employer (a major financial organisation) - three or four years back the decision was made to increase it's capital base and hold back on the lending (where, at the time our competitors were going all out with rate-wars to get business). They were criticised for their conservative approach and there were a number of complaints from staff asking why we couldn't go toe to toe with the competitors on the high street.

Fast forward to last year, the banking sector dies on it's arse and the company that came through it without a penny of public spend on it, and held a share price some twenty times the amount of the big banks, was the one that played for the long game.

It's not a spectacular approach, but it's worth it.










I hope!!

[Jonnyboy]

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"What childish innocence it is to present impatience as a theoretically convincing argument!"

This was written by Frederick Engels in 1874 and is highly relevant here!

Wash your mouth out

[new malkyhib]

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Every now and again, you (and newmalkysomebody) start or drop in on a thread like this and make a post like this.

Time and time again actually.

You never really engage with the posts refuting your supposed points though.

So why should anyone take you seriously now?

I do get that some posters have concerns and criticisms about how the club is run. But.......

It's been going on long enough what with the big drama about the car park money (that never was); the big drama about the wage cap (that never was); the big drama about no money for transfers (that never was); the big story about selling everyone at the first offer (that never was); the big drama about not increasing the wage budget (that never was).

It begs the question. How many folk are just at the wind-up and how many are just stupid?

I have respect for those who can criticise our model and suggest an alternative and justify why it's viable but I've never seen anything from you to put you in that camp I'm afraid.

Feel free to put me right

Ok, i'll try and put you right

It's maybe all about quality of post(s) and not quantity though eh?

So maybe I should bow down to your superior post count and just swallow everything the ER PR spin machine sends us - such as how good a job they're doing with their top-heavy Board and the soundbites they continually send us about the "best-run club in Scotland" etc., etc., despite the fact that the team struggle to qualify for Europe year on year under their stewardship, and the fanfare that there is every time we appoint another faceless suit to tell us more of the same...

So i'm not on "the wind-up", or just "stupid", just curious to know how much longer you, and your fellow Petrie acolytes will hold to the "patience" line - because in my humble opinion, once the new stand is built, then our present owners/benefactors will look to sell up and the fabled "investment in the team because at that point there's nothing else to spend the money on" will prove to be a trojan horse...

Just my opinion,of course...

[Fantic]

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Ok, i'll try and put you right

It's maybe all about quality of post(s) and not quantity though eh?

So maybe I should bow down to your superior post count and just swallow everything the ER PR spin machine sends us - such as how good a job they're doing with their top-heavy Board and the soundbites they continually send us about the "best-run club in Scotland" etc., etc., despite the fact that the team struggle to qualify for Europe year on year under their stewardship, and the fanfare that there is every time we appoint another faceless beauracrat to tell us more of the same...

So i'm not on "the wind-up", or just "stupid", just curious to know how much longer you, and your fellow Petrie acolytes will hold to the "patience" line - because in my humble opinion, once the new stand is built, then our present owners/benefactors will look to sell up and the fabled "investment in the team because at that point there's nothing else to spend the money on" will prove to be a trojan horse...

Just my opinion,of course...

So you would be happier with someone else?
Who you got lined up??

Petrie and Farmer were at the open day on Sunday and were genuinely having a good crack with both the staff and supporters. That says a lot.

[RyeSloan]

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Ok, i'll try and put you right

It's maybe all about quality of post(s) and not quantity though eh?

So maybe I should bow down to your superior post count and just swallow everything the ER PR spin machine sends us - such as how good a job they're doing with their top-heavy Board and the soundbites they continually send us about the "best-run club in Scotland" etc., etc., despite the fact that the team struggle to qualify for Europe year on year under their stewardship, and the fanfare that there is every time we appoint another faceless suit to tell us more of the same...

So i'm not on "the wind-up", or just "stupid", just curious to know how much longer you, and your fellow Petrie acolytes will hold to the "patience" line - because in my humble opinion, once the new stand is built, then our present owners/benefactors will look to sell up and the fabled "investment in the team because at that point there's nothing else to spend the money on" will prove to be a trojan horse...

Just my opinion,of course...

Who gives a toss if they sell up in a few years...what will they be selling? A club with a strong balance sheet, finished stadium, brand new training centre, consistent record of top 6 finishes, sound financials in terms player spend while still retaining a solid squad!!! Sounds like just the perfect base for someone to come in.......

Sometimes I think people are desperate for Petrie to fail and the club not to be fit for sale. Surely if they are spinning all of this to manufacture a sell on then they will be trying to get the best price....that means a fit for purpose club that has little debt, excellent infrastructre and a good team.

Sure 400k sounds a bit high, maybe the club shoudl look at that and attempt to trim the costs of the top to provide more room in the player budget or improve the financials overall but is anyone really saying that they can't see the progress that has been made at Hibs or even more starkly the lack of it by almost every other team in Scotland???

[jgl07]

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Wash your mouth out

Obviously Engels saw where the Yams were coming from in the year of their (alleged) creation.

[brog]

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That's an interesting take on it. The first time that the massively high price for the two of them was mentioned it was by Collins who said £7m for the pair of them.

Which was laughed at by the media, and more than a few in our support as well, as I remember it.

We got fair value for the two of them imo. But I don't particularly think that was down to Petrie, I think it was down to the manager at the time valuing them correctly. If Petrie knew the value of players then imo the sale of O'Connor was crap afaic since I felt he was sold for under his value at a time which was nonsensical. Did he have a pit stop on the road to Damascus in the intervening 8 months?

Absolutely, it was also Collins who virtually forced the board to offer Fletch his new contract & as a result gained us £3mm. Unfortunately Collins failed to persuade the board to honour a verbal commitment to Jones to do likewise.
If posts on this board are accurate we've sold about 8,000 season tickets, that's about 20-25% down on a couple of seasons ago, or put another way, about £1/2mm in income. I don't see brilliant business acumen there albeit it was the shocking early season ticket figures which contributed to Mixu's " resignation ".

[Ray_]

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I agree things are not what we would want, but it's the degree of disatisfaction that puzzles me. I don't think we have been abysmal, compared to other clubs outside the OF we are pretty much on a par.

I can see where the frustration of fans comes from, we had great players, and we sold them for a good price. I think that the Mowbray years were the blip, when you consider Hibs over the last couple of decades. At least we capitalised, financially - we were never going to build on that team.

We were between a rock and a hard place, we had to get the money for those players, yet we knew we couldn't replace them. I don't know how we can put together a good team by spending cash, where are the players that would do the job, and what would they cost.

Realistically we are competing for the best of the dross, when the likes of PNE can pay 5 times our wages. I'm not saying I'm happy, but we have to be realistic.

The other clubs out with the old firm didn't have the platform Hibs did, i.e. the best group of youngsters seen in almost forty years and year on year of breaking income records on all parts of the business & to go from that to where we have been/are, is abysmal.

[Phil D. Rolls]

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The other clubs out with the old firm didn't have the platform Hibs did, i.e. the best group of youngsters seen in almost forty years and year on year of breaking income records on all parts of the business & to go from that to where we have been/are is abysmal.

Part of breaking the income records was selling the players. I think the differences of opinion come from how that money should have been spent, could we have reached another level?

I'm still not convinced it's been abysmal. Filling the team with trialists like we had in the Kenny Waugh years was abysmal; so was facing extinction and that horrendous run of scoreless draws against Hearts; Jim Duffy was abysmal; the last couple of years have been disappointing.

[smurf]

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Do you really want Petrie / Lindsay on your advertising materials?

No i don't think that was my point. And i think you know that.

[ahibby]

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The other clubs out with the old firm didn't have the platform Hibs did, i.e. the best group of youngsters seen in almost forty years and year on year of breaking income records on all parts of the business & to go from that to where we have been/are, is abysmal.

Whether the word should be abysmal or disappointing is another matter but the important point for me lies in what you say about record income from player sales, merchandise and season ticket sales. With the exception of player sales we have seen a downturn this season and last which considering our previous platform is disappointing (oops I said disappointing and not abysmal). However if the poor performance in developing a successful team continues and it leads to further reduction in ST and merchandise sales then that must by abysmal.

If the board have splashed out (was it really £400k for Deeks?) then the expenditure must pay dividends for the club IMO in the form of good season ticket sales. If it doesn't then they have got it wrong in some other way; perhaps by buying players or bringing in managers who are incomplete and unable to do the business in some way. The financial running of the club has been good in the past but I have an issue with the footballing side of things which the board must also take responsibility for. In Scottish terms when you bring in £4,000,000, £3,000,000 and £2,000,000 for single player sales then you are surely a big time club no? So small time signings (and I'll refrain from singling out certain players recent past and present) just doesn't sit well.

[Ray_]

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Part of breaking the income records was selling the players. I think the differences of opinion come from how that money should have been spent, could we have reached another level?

I'm still not convinced it's been abysmal. Filling the team with trialists like we had in the Kenny Waugh years was abysmal; so was facing extinction and that horrendous run of scoreless draws against Hearts; Jim Duffy was abysmal; the last couple of years have been disappointing.

The sales wasn't the part I was relating to, it was the merchandising, season ticket, walk up & hospitality, the player sales would be considered asset stripping. Again, Jimmy Duffy didn't have the platform that we had, if he did hopefully he wouldn't have bought all those first division Ike players, ironically, just like some of those we have began shipping out, that had been brought in to replace the quality that was leaving.

[Phil D. Rolls]

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The sales wasn't the part I was relating to, it was the merchandising, season ticket, walk up & hospitality, the player sales would be considered asset stripping. Again, Jimmy Duffy didn't have the platform that we had, if he did hopefully he wouldn't have bought all those first division Ike players, ironically, just like some of those we have began shipping out, that had been brought in to replace the quality that was leaving.

Jim Duffy had a lot of money to spend though.

Do you realistically think we could have held onto the players we sold. I don't, and it was better to get money for them than let them go for zero. That's the reality, we were never going to build from that position, as I don't think we could replace them. We got lucky.

[Ray_]

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Jim Duffy had a lot of money to spend though.

Do you realistically think we could have held onto the players we sold. I don't, and it was better to get money for them than let them go for zero. That's the reality, we were never going to build from that position, as I don't think we could replace them. We got lucky.

Some of them yes & having a team challenging would have made things easier.

Yes we got lucky, we were lucky that we had all those players coming through together & we were lucky that TM applied for the managers position, did we make best use of that luck? To see us in the last two season's & where we are desperately lacking now, I think not.

[ahibby]

I don't think Jimmy Boco, Barry Lavety and Chic Charnley were big expensive deals but they are three of the key players I remember from JDs days.

[Ray_]

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I don't think Jimmy Boco, Barry Lavety and Chic Charnley were big expensive deals but they are three of the key players I remember from JDs days.

Filled Rolls is absolutely right, Jim Duffy spent a lot of money, far too much money in fact, we were paying a kings ransom for mediocre players Lavety being one of them, 100k for Power, 100k for Tosh plus wages etc etc etc, we already had a large pool of players when we started bringing in hordes more & we needed to get rid far sooner than we did.

[ahibby]

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Some of them yes & having a team challenging would have made things easier.

Yes we got lucky, we were lucky that we had all those players coming through together & we were lucky that TM applied for the managers position, did we make best use of that luck? To see us in the last two season's & where we are desperately lacking now, I think not.

In football terms we seem to have gone down the boom and bust road and it shows in our attitude that sixth place is just not good enough, what we expect since our success financial and football in the TM days. We might not be able to afford to replace the likes of Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson, Steven Whittaker, Gary O'Connor, Buezelin etc but we shouldn't have been bringing in some of the signings we have endured of late.

In some ways this reminds me of what Alex McLeish said about Didier Agathe. Something along the lines of 'my only option was to sign him for three months, if I hadn't someone else would have and I would have denied our fans and the team. He was a short lived success with us scoring more goals in three months than he did at Celtic in two seasons. It is better to have loved than not loved at all is another way of looking at it but some of us find it hard to accept a period of financial success (record breaking success) followed by mediocrity or worse in football. Rant over.

[ahibby]

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Filled Rolls is absolutely right, Jim Duffy spent a lot of money, far too much money in fact, we were paying a kings ransom for mediocre players Lavety being one of them, 100k for Power, 100k for Tosh plus wages etc etc etc, we already had a large pool of players when we started bringing in hordes more & we needed to get rid far sooner than we did.

Well maybe that is the case I don't know but I was close to someone who worked with Duffy at ER and he told me Hibs were thinking small. The person concerned had a key position at ER and according to him was only on £12K a year. I bow to your superior knowledge of player costs though. Stevie Crawford I believe was another of their signings no? The JD team without Lavety was distinctly light weight, although I don't think many would like to mess with Tosh.

[Ray_]

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In football terms we seem to have gone down the boom and bust road and it shows in our attitude that sixth place is just not good enough, what we expect since our success financial and football in the TM days. We might not be able to afford to replace the likes of Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson, Steven Whittaker, Gary O'Connor, Buezelin etc but we shouldn't have been bringing in some of the signings we have endured of late.

In some ways this reminds me of what Alex McLeish said about Didier Agathe. Something along the lines of 'my only option was to sign him for three months, if I hadn't someone else would have and I would have denied our fans and the team. He was a short lived success with us scoring more goals in three months than he did at Celtic in two seasons. It is better to have loved than not loved at all is another way of looking at it but some of us find it hard to accept a period of financial success (record breaking success) followed by mediocrity or worse in football. Rant over.

I was brought up to support Hibs & never through my upbringing did I, nor anybody else for that matter, consider sixth place particularly good, on the contrary, it was considered poor.

As for Agathe, I thought it was Hibs decision to sign him on a three month loan deal from Raith Rovers?? There didn't seem to be a que of clubs until he was such a success those couple of months at Hibs [we will exclude the miss at Tynie].

[Phil D. Rolls]

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Well maybe that is the case I don't know but I was close to someone who worked with Duffy at ER and he told me Hibs were thinking small. The person concerned had a key position at ER and according to him was only on £12K a year. I bow to your superior knowledge of player costs though. Stevie Crawford I believe was another of their signings no? The JD team without Lavety was distinctly light weight, although I don't think many would like to mess with Tosh.

I think the club spent big between Duffy's arrival and McLeish's departure. I know a lot of people think it was a travesty that Alex Miller didn't get the cash to spend that those guys did.

[ahibby]

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I was brought up to support Hibs & never through my upbringing did I, nor anybody else for that matter, consider sixth place particularly good, on the contrary, it was considered poor.

As for Agathe, I thought it was Hibs decision to sign him on a three month loan deal from Raith Rovers?? There didn't seem to be a que of clubs until he was such a success those couple of months at Hibs [we will exclude the miss at Tynie].

Not quite right Ray. What actually happened is that Celtic went sniffing around before he signed from us and he was advised to only sign for a short term (not by Celtic but by some connection in Fife, sounds obscure I guess but thats what happened). He knew that if he impressed at Hibs, Celtic were coming from him and that is why he and not Hibs insisted on a three month deal (he was acting on advice).

[ahibby]

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I was brought up to support Hibs & never through my upbringing did I, nor anybody else for that matter, consider sixth place particularly good, on the contrary, it was considered poor.

As for Agathe, I thought it was Hibs decision to sign him on a three month loan deal from Raith Rovers?? There didn't seem to be a que of clubs until he was such a success those couple of months at Hibs [we will exclude the miss at Tynie].

I remember one season I thought eleventh place would have been good but unfortunately we finished twelvth and were relegated