Got the gig with Sheff U
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Got the gig with Sheff U
Delighted for him. Didn't work out up here but had a chance to chat with him once and he was a very clever chap, fantastic football knowledge and spoke well of the club.
Hope he does well.
That is actually pretty funny he's got that job whilst we are all squabbling over Jack Ross remaining in charge.
Good luck to them.
Marvin Bartley (who didn’t really get
Much game time with him) says that Hecky was the best coach he’s ever worked with
4 and a half year deal as well which sounds absolutely mental...
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Pleased for the guy and gives us something else to have an interest in.
Good news.
Josh Vela was a Hibs signing. Comes up all the time. His name was on the wall when Lennon was there. He had all the credentials for what we wanted at the time. He just didn’t work out. Had Doidge not missed about 20 chances in Heckys time he’d prob still be here. Now we have Nisbet missing so it will be JR that’s punted next. Small margins is the saying I believe.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hecky has been given a FOUR and a half year deal. That is crazy in this day and age in that league. Wow.
Good luck to him.
He had the right ideas but needs to improve his motivational skills. Hopefully the time out has helped.
Pleased for him. Never worked out at Hibs but as said if Doidge had his shooting boots on could have been different. He also had Boyle out for pretty much his whole time at Hibs and we know what a difference that makes to us. I think he was very unlucky to get his jotters and if our league form continues as it has then it will be interesting to see how quickly the Board would think about a change of manager. Ross seems competent enough for me and I'd far rather we got into the habit of backing rather than sacking managers
We've had worse. I think he had a lot of good ideas, I don't think you take the lead that often without some idea of how to set up a team. Injuries to key players hurt him a lot.
Well done Hecky - all the best.
Well done Hecky. Good luck.
Yup I was fortunate along with some others to visit the training centre when Hibs.net sponsorship funded the gps stuff. He was not much longer in charge and you got a bit of a sense of defensiveness but to be fair he fielded and handled the questions well and in details.
what I took from that was - he was intense, a deep thinker of the game. He talked about the importance of fitness and sports science - you’re not an athlete you just won’t be considered down South - so if we want to sell there essential. He also acknowledged it needed to be more that fitness and that psychology has a part to play. He didn’t come out and say a lot of the challengers were in the players heads but I think that’s what he was hinting at. Doidge could have been an example of that. Wasn’t Hanlon also injured? Decent hardworking guy. Wish him well.
Seems to get a good reputation as a coach but just didn’t get results for us. Was the right time for him to go when he did. Be interesting to see how he does at Sheffield United.
If he wasn't unlucky with injuries and Doidge missing his chances, he would probably still be here and doing well.
I liked him even though it didn't work out here. All the best to him.
Up there with Butcher and Duffy as my least favourite ever Hibs managers.
Con man who should never have set foot at ER.
This part is interesting as his Hibs team basically couldn't run. Vela, Mallan, Allan in midfield. Tom James at full back. Trying to play Newell as a winger FFS. It was mind boggling.
I was pretty hyped when he came in as I believed his philosophy would revolve around high pressing and intensity. He talked about that but the reality was the opposite and not one of his signings were in that mould.
Might do a lot better with the resources available at Sheff Utd to be fair, where the squad is already good enough for promotion.
Hecky is interesting. The players loved him. Tactically he was said to be the best coach many of them have ever worked with . There was high hopes in the board that they had someone special . Yet , the football and the results were stinking .
It just never happened for us or him when he was at the helm.
You wonder if Doidge had scored a couple of those chances up at Aberdeen - would that have triggered a different set of results ? We will never know .
Once he left , victory up at Perth under May & Co, felt like such a wonderful relief .
Good luck to him.
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Really liked the guy, wish him all the success in the world.
He had an interesting face. Puckish.
I imagine he's still got it.
Suspect they could go on a wee run now and get themselves up near the playoff spots.
Interesting that people say the players liked him. As soon as he left it was like the shackles came off. I often wondered if he gave them to much information to think about in games and that inhibited them.
I thought he was a very likeable guy and he's clearly a good coach. Not everyone liked him but that's life. Good luck to him. We've both moved on.
I think it was the training and the man, im not convinced he could set a team up to win a football game but a lot of people even down Leeds raved about his coaching and he certainly wasn't anywhere close to the levels of ******** as the likes of butcher and calderwood, Hecky wasn't a bad guy just wasn't good enough.
Didn't mind him as manager, says something that he's been given that job at that level. Duffy, Mixu, Fenlon and Butcher all far far worse than him.
My memory of him was more that what he said is not what was happening on the pitch.....as someone already pointed out, a lot of talk about high intensity, high push....but a team that seemed predominantly slow and on the back foot.
FWIW, I think Hibs are one of the toughest gigs in Scotland for a manager. We are one of the big 5 and expectations reflect that. We have one of the best infrastructures in the country and (relatively speaking) we have a good sized support who turn out to watch the team. That said though, our player budget has lagged behind Aberdeen and Hearts, and is miles away that of the OF. Being a professional sport, you need to pay good money for good players - Heckingbottom (in my opinion) simply didn't have the budget to bring in the players that could play the game he wanted to play.....so he gambled and sadly it didn't pay off.
I wish him well. Success at Sheffield Utd doesn't mean we ditched a good manager and missed out, it just means we let go of a manager whose skill set didn't fit what was needed at Easter Road.
seriously ? he was sacked just 4 months into an 18 month contract, won just 4 games in 16, and as a veryyy long time follower of all things Leeds i was one of the many thousands glad to see the back of him,hence my big concern even when it was just rumoured Hibs were thinking about him.. a likeable guy though.
One up front at home for Sheffield Utd for the foreseeable then...
I’m grateful to him for the win at Tynecastle. But that’s about it.
Neither of those 2 players was good enough. He was right to let both go.
Mixu and fenlon were significantly better than butcher, Calderwood and Duffy.
Mixu and Fenlon got us some good results over Hearts and the OF. Fenlon had a couple of good runs in cup. We were utter crap under butcher, Duffy and Calderwood.
He might have come good in the end but made a few critical mistakes.
Loved a 451 that he just didn’t have the players to play. Didn’t understand the need to play in the front foot and attack weaker teams, especially at home. Made a mediocre midfield worse.
Worth remembering how much Doidge struggled at the start under him - and picked up as soon as he had a strike partner.
Hecky had a decent half season up to the summer then a minging start to his second season.
I don’t think he’s that different to Jack Ross and given time he might well have picked up. He was never going to be given that time though and it was right that he went.
Not sure he “got” Scottish football at all.
I agree with most of that, but I think he just got lucky at the start. He didn't change anything but I think the team just got a collective boot up the erchie when Lennon was sacked/wasn't sacked.
There was no point in his time at Hibs that I thought he was the real deal. That might be more about me than him, but I'm usually as defensive as f*** about Hibs players and managers and Heckingbottom was the first I had no time for.
I completely agree with you.
Initial results were good but I wasn’t at all convinced by him. His public comments about getting ‘bits and pieces’ of information into the players came across as arrogant to me, as if here was this super coach come to show Scottish football how it’s done.
Then we had the calamitous summer transfer window, where he made a load of changes to the squad and left us horribly unbalanced. I remember the St Johnstone home game early that season which ended in a draw somehow despite us looking utterly clueless and lacking any kind of shape.
He was the wrong appointment and the wrong fit for the club. No particular shame in that - it happens with players and coaches - but we needed to fix that mistake ASAP.
I think he didn't understand the game up here enough and respect the need to sign players who know the league rather than think English League one and Championship players will be good enough in this league.
It just didn't work out for him, he seemed an ambitious and determined guy, he didn't upset anyone just had a poor run of results.
Who knows, had he signed experienced SPFL Premiership players, he might still be here. Who knows.
I disagree. But even if that were the case, letting that type of player go without having any kind of decent replacement to give a bit of proverbial 'steel' to the midfiel was criminal. He did it before Vela arrived/was fit (can't remember now). And as it turned out, Vela was a bit pish anyway.
He hardly played for Hibs for about 18 months before he left …
We were though, as you say, left high and dry when they both left and Ojo backed out on the move and went to Aberdeen. Hibs expected him to keep to the verbal agreement and let Milligan and Bartley go as a result .
They were good enough to get us higher up the league than Hecky managed that year…
I actually rated both of those players. Certainly not up there with the McGinn, McGeouch, Fyvie midfield and I’d say they’re not as good as our current first choice 3 - but they were both first picks for that guff period between these 2 teams.
Does Heckimgbottom get a bit of an unfair deal in how he is viewed? I’ll caveat that I think he was probably the wrong man to appoint and it was probably right to part ways when we did.
He seems to get the blame for that summers recruitment in not replacing Bartley or Milligan. Was he let down by the recruitment team in the same way Ross was? Should he be accorded some of the same mitigation for the struggles he faced with an imbalanced squad?
Our recruitment strategy hasn't been good enough for some time now. Probably as far back as Lennon's last season. Hecky seemed to end up with half a dozen players plucked from down south all at once. Some came good after a settling in period and others were guff. In light of recent events i'm not sure i blame Hecky for that.
He got us out of the freefall that Lennon had left us in and overhauled the 11 point lead that Hearts had over us so that was a couple of achievements.
Overall though he proved too stubborn to make changes that we all knew were needed - persisting with the lone striker etc. - so he paid the price.
We were simply a pay cheque to him.
He didn't give a toss for Hibs. He knew he would get 3 years' salary without even having to try.
Was probably delighted when he got sacked as he got back down south with the cash sooner than expected.
Yep.
The sizes of the payoffs appear disproportionate at times but they are sums agreed to mitigate massive job insecurity in an industry that in some places is awash with cash.
No manager wants to fail and whilst I’m sure a handsome payoff must be nice, I always think it must be quite damaging to the pride of a confident person to fail publicly.
There will have been plenty of managers out there that knew they would be out of their depth or that they couldn't do the job they're going for.
That won't put them off applying for these jobs though.
What did PH have to lose? He was out of work and all of a sudden he's guaranteed 3 years' salary whether successful or not.
He took us for a ride and left with a hefty pay off no doubt.
That is totally unfounded. He was a very well qualified coach. The club made him the offer and it didn't work out. Have you got any evidence he was knowingly out his depth. Pretty serious allegations on someone who seemed very professional and hard working to me and who is now in a comparable type of role, no doubt on more money too. I'm sure Heck would argue if he had been given more time he may well be doing what Jack Ross is now doing
You obviously believe PH has no skills to be a head coach . Hibs and the players would hugely disagree . The Hibs board actually thought they had struck it lucky with PH. Felt they had recruited someone special . The players feel he was the best and most technical coach they had ever had . His level of detail is famed. Much more than anyone they had worked for before , and much more than JR is now .
He’s clearly well thought of in the game . You don’t get the coaching gig at Sheffield United without that.
He needs to prove that he can get results with a team over a sustained period . So I can accept he is far from a proven head coach . But your narrative that he is useless, and knows that, and doesn’t care about his performance - is so far away from reality that it is 100 percent baseless …
What is former England captain Terry Butcher up to these days?
A failure at Hibs isn't something anyone wants on their CV.
Heckingbottom was a highly thought of coach down South prior to coming to us. Was he really going to deliberately risk that reputation just to steal 3 years worth of a wage out of Hibs, wages probably inferior to those that a decent coach would be paid in England?
He has done very well to win this opportunity so soon after being sacked by us tbh.
It didn't work out for him here, I'm not questioning that but i think you're being really harsh on a guy who did his best.
At worst he was probably guilty of a bit of hubris - thinking he'd come up here and piss it only to find it tougher than he expected.
Got lucky at the start and a decent run - think the wheels started to come off in the split fixture
Was confirmed in the league cup in his first full season - I think it was abroath away it was on telly, hibs looked absolutely hopeless. I remember thinking I hope this isn’t a red flag.
Newell was left wing. Couple of other players looked totally alien to Scottish football.
Unsurprising things didn’t get much better and the first game of the season an Allan winner in a very huff and puff game hung on for the win
The next game was the big eye opener
6-1 thumping at ibrox
Inevitable and another Englishman came up thinking he could conquer the Scottish game.
He will do well to last a year at Sheffield United
That’s probably a much fairer assessment than I’d give him but I guess I agree with you.
I just didn’t take to him from his interview on day 1 and it never got any better.
He just seemed completely uninterested, same as Calderwood.
Compare that to Stubbs, Lennon or Ross. They all seemed genuinely delighted and privileged to be our boss. That’s what I like to see.
PH might have been a lovely bloke and a brilliant coach but he had no place applying for, or taking, the Hibs job.
He was even quoted as saying he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be a manager. Well, I want someone who will bust a gut to have our top job, not someone who just fells meh about it.
You get manager and coaches that players like but who for whatever reason can't get a tune out the team on the park.
A lot of Hibs players at the time loved Calderwoods training sessions. Hard work and varied. Same with Heckingbottom, the players enjoyed his training and praised his tactical knowledge and feedback using data provided. However neither could convert that to on field performance. In the case of the latter I always though the teams he set out looked overcoached. There was no room for self expression, everyone and everything seemed very rigid and formulaic.
I'm interested to see how Heckingbottom does at Sheffield United. As a permanent manager he's only managed a win percentage above 30% once (ironically enough at Hibs) so I'm sceptical he will be a roaring success. Time will tell.