Have to say I have experienced extereme lows and some real highs as a Hibee, today however hurts like hell.To be outclassed by an average Hearts side on our home patch and looking content just to avoid defeat hurts my pride.Unlike on other occasions where effort & commitment could be questioned, today we were quite simply shown up as a team of players nowhere near good enough to be playing at this level & for this club. We have younger players whos careers have stalled, journeymen either not up to the job or not interested, players constantly being played out of position, and players who in all honesty must wonder themselves how they are playing at this level.A complete embarresment to our club and its proud supporters, and for me a sad sad day and one of my lowest ebbs following Hibs, not the defeat itself just what it has highlighted..What exactly is our boards long term strategy on the playing side? I don't think they have one.
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Thread: Pride well and truely dented
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02-01-2012 06:00 PM #1
Pride well and truely dented
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02-01-2012 06:12 PM #2
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02-01-2012 06:18 PM #3
To call Hearts "average" is being kind to them and yet they still looked better than us for most of the game.
To answer the op's final question, it appears the board's playing strategy is that we avoid relegation and occasionally make the top six.
The targets themselves are not good enough and, IMO, even the more modest of these targets is in serious danger of not being realised.
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02-01-2012 06:40 PM #5This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
What I mean though is, the board will tell us top 4 and competing in the latter stages of cups is what the club should be achieving their mission statement so to speak.
What have they done to provide the platform to achieve this and that is the strategy to realise their goals?
Some folk will say that they provide the 4th highest wage budget in the Spl,which I believe is the case. But that isnt going to achieve anything alone, for instance when we sold the browns, thomsons, murphys, whittakers, Bambas, Stokes or before we took the stance of going down the selling road why didnt the board have a strategy of working with the manager or appointing a football brain to identify good quality players at other clubs that we could buy using say 25 per cent of the fee we got for a certain player. We then would look to bring the players on further before selling them on at a profit.
What that would have done was keep a continuity to our squad and given us a chance of competing where we should be whilst making a profit on player trading in the long run.
Simply *****ing the 4th highest wage bill on absolute mediocrity isnt good enough either.
I get the feeling that Petrie etc just thought we would continually produce 3million pound players season after season simple as that, perhaps if we had invested a decent wedge on good young players taking the next step with a view to selling it may have worked.
I dont think there is any strategy at Hibs whatsoever, and for me its the biggest problem we have and the problems we have now are as a consequence of the boards lack of strategy.
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03-01-2012 01:00 AM #7
It's a steady and worrying decline that has served to rob the club and support of any slither of ambition we may have had.
The cycle of selling good players and replacing them with cheap buys or freebies has hit us hard. The fact many were targeted by substandard managers (our last one in particular who should not have been anywhere near ER in a million years) has guaranteed the dross we are stuck with today.
I remember we got £2M for Whittaker then bring in Thierry Gathuessi on a pittance.
£4.4M for Scott Brown and we are watching the likes of Brian Kerr later. Couldn't even invest the 400k from the deal on a solid midfielder whose value may have gone up.
After guys like Fletcher and Stokes we had to endure Trakys, Gow, Duffy.
The board seem to think we can unearth diamonds from mountains of coal whenever we sell. That happens every so often but is no strategy to help move the club forward.Last edited by Baader; 03-01-2012 at 01:15 AM.
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03-01-2012 01:46 AM #8This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
This post explains the main problem at hibs. The board were happy to take the money but have invested f all back on the pitch.
Whittaker replaced by Gathuessi
Murphy replaced by Hanlon
Brown replaced by Kerr
Sproule replaced by Morais
Thomson replaced by Stevenson
The whole situation stinks and the board have tried to cost cut in the hope we can just sneak into the top 6 still charging £400 a season ticket. Heads surely must roll in the boardroom!
The summer of 2007 was when the board could have decided to invest and try and secure hibs place at the top end of the table... In the end they tried to pull a fast one by making millions and replacing the players with cheap/youth players. Absolutely scandelous.Last edited by Cameron1875; 03-01-2012 at 01:49 AM.
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03-01-2012 01:48 AM #9
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The reality is that the Hearts team we played today was signed on a budget of more than twice that of Hibs - regardless of whether the shower of ******s are getting paid or not!
The reality is also that the current Hibs team are sitting in the bottom two of the league - way below where we should expect to be of course, so it should not have come as any great surprise to you that Hearts looked a bit better for most of the game today - should it?
But - guess what!!! We have a new manager (in case you hadn't noticed). He might just turn out to be good if you give him more than the two or three weeks he's had so far to turn things around. Also - there's the reality of technical insolvency which the Yams have been running away from for so long and which now seems to be catching up with them.
I think the board's strategy over the last 10 years or so has been skewed towards infrastructure in the hope of gaining a long term advantage - a bit too much to the disadvantage of the football team IMO which is largely why we are now in a struggle against relegation with crowds back down to the darker days of the 90s.
Nevertheless I still would very much favour this strategy when set against the suicidal nonsense indulged in by the Yams which leaves them in serious doubt as to their continuing existance.
Fenlon has only just started in the job at Hibs - he has already improved the attitude and application displayed by the team IMO and the board have stated that they will back him (f***in better do IMO) - please give him a chance to make a few signings and shape his team before slitting your wrists!
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03-01-2012 02:00 AM #10
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That would be back in 1902 then?!?
Seriously - I can't remember a time in my days of watching Hibs (since late 70s) when we HAVEN'T been a club embarking on the selling road!
The lack of a proper football strategy though is a serious problem which is totally attributable to the constant chopping and changing of managers over the last 10-15 tears IMO. It's the manager who SHOULD be the main governing influence over the football strategy at the club IMO, and all the chopping and changing has lead to a lack of focus and direction.
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03-01-2012 02:05 AM #11
What I find most disturbing is the apathy, it appears not just confined to the board and the players, but now seems to be creeping into the support as well. I come into that catagory too, sadly, because even though I have found Fenlon refreshing to listen to, I am still struggling to accept that he is going to be given either the time or the money to improve this team to the scale that is needed drastically. God help us that we ever go down Heart's route, but even though we are not losing anything like as much money as them, we will gradually be losing more and more each year as next to nothing is spent on the team. The days of bargain basement buys seem to be a thing of the past, as far as Hibs are concerned anyway, there must be something seriously wrong with the scouting system since John Park left, because we really are heading towards the bad old days of Duff Jimmy. Bit of irony here though, when Duff Jimmy was kicked out and McLeish came in, we really did spend money, we went into a larger debt, but it was a great team to watch amongst other things. So we don't spend money and that's bad, or we do spend money and that's bad too...I really don't know the answer, but I'm sure there are some people on hibs.net who will probably think they do.
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03-01-2012 04:03 AM #12
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Any time you make a bet (spend) you take a risk which could see you win or lose.
If you don't bet at all you'll still have to pay your blinds (see rules for Texas Hold'em) and eventually all your chips will bleed away.
The best way to play is usually to bet affordably on your best hands - but always being prepared to go all in if you've got the nuts in your hand.
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03-01-2012 11:42 AM #13This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
What Hearts and Rangers have done is cheated. They've overspent and continue to overspend hoping it will all work out alright in the end.
I'd like to see a rule where if you've not paid a player he can't play.
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03-01-2012 11:45 AM #14
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03-01-2012 12:02 PM #15This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
They are average compared to any of Hearts or Hibs good sides over the years. In comparrison to our current side they may seem a lot better than average, but they are average and we are completely awful. Lets get one thing straight, this isnt the Hearts of 5 years ago with 15k a week players etc, they have gradually been bringing down their wages for 2 years and although they have outspent us on wages the players they have are hardly anything special, thats where its so embarrasing to take yesterdays defeat and the way we approached the game.
I take your point about their budget/debt and our infrastructure etc, but look at 3 simple facts these past 2 years... League table, derby record, attendances. We are behind in all 3 and getting further behind them.
I do get what you mean regarding spending money they dont have, unfortunatley its not cheating if there are no rules to stop it, I'm far more interested in our own problems, to back that I'd suggest comparing our records versus clubs with significantly lower budgets than ours, look at the league tables, head to heads, and how the average attendances have fallen (as a percentage)...
We are in deep **** mate, and it will continue to get worse as long as we are run in the same way by the same people.
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03-01-2012 12:40 PM #16This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Hearts have overspent wildly and massively for years creating an artificial competitive advantage. The law of averages should mean that Hearts League table, derby record, attendances are better.
If you want to compare us to some other team then the same holds true. We're out performed by just about everyone else on a regular basis. To try and avoid this, we held on to man in August who was desperate to get away.
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03-01-2012 01:08 PM #17This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
For the record I'm not trying to create an argument, but Driver came through their youth system, Skacel was a free no-one else wanted at that time , Sutton I would agree yet others were heralding O'Connor as a far better signing (me included).
The fact none of our players would get into Hearts side, and the fact that their entire squad could walk into ours says more about the lack of quality at Easter Road rather than what it says about how good Hearts are.
And the fact our Board especially Petrie tried to keep a dud in the summer before factoring in his lack of commitment to the cause is a large factor in the mess we are in at the moment, that along with no footballing strategy, and a bizarre signing policy.
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03-01-2012 01:44 PM #18
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Driver would have walked for free years ago if they hadn't hiked up his wages so the fact he was a youth there is not relevant. All our youth players who were decent have moved on.
They have a first team squad of about 60 players and so they can shrug off the likes of Stevenson and Jonsson walking away and still have the likes of Skacel, Sutton and Driver on the bench.
Skacel was free but on very decent wages. Sutton, Black, Webster, Hammil, Grainger were all tempted by more money than any other team outside the OF could afford. Kello and Zaliukus they couldn't have kept until now unless they were paid well.
Make no mistake, we are also poor compared to the likes of Inverness but Hearts should be miles ahead of us as the current squads stand.
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03-01-2012 01:55 PM #19This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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