Yogi, Jeffries and patience?

[Sproston Green]

There was an article in last Sunday’s Scotland on Sunday outlining the similarities in the careers of Jeffries and Hughes, and ever since he was appointed I have hoped that Hughes could be ‘our Jeffries’ in terms of what he did at Hearts (first time around, obviously).

But it is worth looking at, because my memory of that time, was that he took a good couple of years to build his team (that ’98 team, which remain the best Hearts team I can remember).

If memory serves there were a couple of seasons of Hans Eskillson, Willie Jamieson, Pasquale Bruno etc and I can certainly remember them getting papped in two cup finals by the stickies, and also losing out in a few semi-finals, against Aberdeen at Hampden (and possibly also against Airdrie at Hampden, we played Celtic at Ibrox in the other semi, though this might have pre-dated him).

My point is, are we just a ridiculous in our expectations as to how quickly things happen – I mean, is it feasible that Yogi could have shaped the squad and mentality in what is basically 2 transfer windows?

That is not to say he is blameless (what is it with Hibs managers and insisting on playing 3 up front all the time?) but the squad remains brutally imbalanced in my opinion - we still have no right back (despite Spoony’s best efforts), no right midfield player (or even a player capable of consistently playing there, except Spoony who is a youngster and therefore unreliable), we have no pace anywhere in the team, we are physically short, we don’t have a left midfield player (again, despite Riordan’s best efforts) and we don’t have a target man but we have an adundance of very talented, if somewhat mercurial, strikers/second strikers.

Little of this is Yogi’s fault, it is generally the remains of previous managers’ work and a bit of his own, leaving the options pretty limited.

I wonder how much of this is a modern curse, the media-driven reality that we all want success yesterday and are not prepared to have patience. I realise that a good part of this is down to the post-Bosman era making ‘building a team’ more difficult, but Yogi’s mentor Jeffries did it, over a period of years, so maybe we do need to have some patience, safe in the knowledge that:

Our manager is among the best that would probably be available to us
We are progressing strongly off the field.
We are progressing on the field too, the problem being that earlier in the season we had progressed 10 times (which was false) and we have now dropped back to somewhere less than that (again, which is false) – I think the truth is somewhere in the middle
We do have potentially three important assets in building a team – 1) a saleable asset or two to generate funds that would not harm the long term project (Bamba, Zemmama, possibly even Stokes) -2) some promising youngsters (Hanlon, Spoony, Galbraith) and -3) a couple of steady-eddie journeyman types who don’t look like leaving (Murray, McBride, Miller).
The most positive thing, we seem to now have the goalie problem sorted out (which we all would have taken as probably the single most important problem-position that we had).

Of course I would like to finish 3rd, and we still could, but I think Utd are just a better and stronger team (the result of 2 or 3 years work I might add…).

[maximushibee]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

There was an article in last Sunday’s Scotland on Sunday outlining the similarities in the careers of Jeffries and Hughes, and ever since he was appointed I have hoped that Hughes could be ‘our Jeffries’ in terms of what he did at Hearts (first time around, obviously).

But it is worth looking at, because my memory of that time, was that he took a good couple of years to build his team (that ’98 team, which remain the best Hearts team I can remember).

If memory serves there were a couple of seasons of Hans Eskillson, Willie Jamieson, Pasquale Bruno etc and I can certainly remember them getting papped in two cup finals by the stickies, and also losing out in a few semi-finals, against Aberdeen at Hampden (and possibly also against Airdrie at Hampden, we played Celtic at Ibrox in the other semi, though this might have pre-dated him).

My point is, are we just a ridiculous in our expectations as to how quickly things happen – I mean, is it feasible that Yogi could have shaped the squad and mentality in what is basically 2 transfer windows?

That is not to say he is blameless (what is it with Hibs managers and insisting on playing 3 up front all the time?) but the squad remains brutally imbalanced in my opinion - we still have no right back (despite Spoony’s best efforts), no right midfield player (or even a player capable of consistently playing there, except Spoony who is a youngster and therefore unreliable), we have no pace anywhere in the team, we are physically short, we don’t have a left midfield player (again, despite Riordan’s best efforts) and we don’t have a target man but we have an adundance of very talented, if somewhat mercurial, strikers/second strikers.

Little of this is Yogi’s fault, it is generally the remains of previous managers’ work and a bit of his own, leaving the options pretty limited.

I wonder how much of this is a modern curse, the media-driven reality that we all want success yesterday and are not prepared to have patience. I realise that a good part of this is down to the post-Bosman era making ‘building a team’ more difficult, but Yogi’s mentor Jeffries did it, over a period of years, so maybe we do need to have some patience, safe in the knowledge that:

Our manager is among the best that would probably be available to us
We are progressing strongly off the field.
We are progressing on the field too, the problem being that earlier in the season we had progressed 10 times (which was false) and we have now dropped back to somewhere less than that (again, which is false) – I think the truth is somewhere in the middle
We do have potentially three important assets in building a team – 1) a saleable asset or two to generate funds that would not harm the long term project (Bamba, Zemmama, possibly even Stokes) -2) some promising youngsters (Hanlon, Spoony, Galbraith) and -3) a couple of steady-eddie journeyman types who don’t look like leaving (Murray, McBride, Miller).
The most positive thing, we seem to now have the goalie problem sorted out (which we all would have taken as probably the single most important problem-position that we had).

Of course I would like to finish 3rd, and we still could, but I think Utd are just a better and stronger team (the result of 2 or 3 years work I might add…).

good post although to me motherwell look the favourites for 3rd they are flying with craig brown at the helm unbeaten in 12 i think.. and have the same players jim gannon had

[hibee4life1983]

[QUOTE=Sproston Green;2391089][FONT=Verdana][SIZE=2]There was an article in last Sunday’s Scotland on Sunday outlining the similarities in the careers of Jeffries and Hughes, and ever since he was appointed I have hoped that Hughes could be ‘our Jeffries’. . . . . . . . . Are u having a laugh? Fat jim knew is a phanny and anyone with his bumbling antics would destroy our prestigous club, dont get me wrong, most of your post i agree with but yogi our jumbo? Away an boil yer heed'
Yogi's himself and doesnt need to take any leaves out of fatty's book, so they worked together years ago and they get on? Big whoop, they managed the same team? Ooooh that means mark magoo at the dons takes after alex ferguson, lot of nonsense!

Lets just support the team and get it right up the yams on saturday.

[seanraff07]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

good post although to me motherwell look the favourites for 3rd they are flying with craig brown at the helm unbeaten in 12 i think.. and have the same players jim gannon had

We were more than 12 games unbeaten and look what happened to us, suppose it is Hibs.