All of the calls for getting rid of Paul Heckingbottom, understandable as they are, are rather missing the point. The guy is doing his very best but just doesn't have the necessary skills to have the team near the top of this league.
Paul Heckingbottom II is not what we need.
The club has now returned to its default setting after a brief, but enjoyable, flurry under Stubbs and Lennon.
During the fiasco over Lennon's sacking, there were many fools jubilantly posting about how things were just going to get better and better. But the wiser heads were filled with foreboding as the board brought a brief era of 'football first' at Hibs to an end.
Those who slated Lennon back then, rubbishing his record against Hearts have now had their greatest wish come true - albeit with a caveat. We are now in fierce competition with our city rivals after all - but in a race to the bottom.
Where now are the voices which screamed about our 'lowly' 8th position in the league? Now that we are 10th, and with little hope of improvement, Lennon's little tantrums and eccentricities pale into insignificance compared to the football which we witnessed back then.
Hibs threw out the baby and kept the bathwater and the fans should have been up in arms and in revolt concerning that fiasco. There was no revolt. Just talk of how LD would have us moving 'onwards and upwards'. What bloody nonsense.
It's time to get rid of LD and the rest of the dead wood in the club. She did her job for a couple of years but now it's time for change.
On the 4th February 2019, while being shouted down on this forum by members of the LD fan club, I said the following:
"I am predicting that we will have five new 'head coaches' within the next four years. I would be happy to be proved wrong on this - but nothing short of an upheaval will change that."
Let's see if this club has the guts to push through the upheaval necessary.
Results 1 to 13 of 13
Thread: The way forward
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27-10-2019 03:11 PM #1
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The way forward
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27-10-2019 03:13 PM #2
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We have a new owner and we are ***** on the pitch.
We need action before it gets any worse.
Sir Tom and Petrie must be laughing - talk about getting out at precisely the right time. They would get millions less next summer for the club the rate it’s stagnating.
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27-10-2019 03:24 PM #3madhatterLeft by mutual consent!
Hibs need to stop recruiting coaches that are ex-Hibs or ex-Celtic men, from fellow Scottish clubs (smaller) or young up-and-coming British managers.
Put it this way, we may have just got lucky with Stubbs due to his team and how it all played out. He was fortunate the club some how managed to get Fyvie, Henderson, McGeouch, McGinn and Stokes. Would he have managed what he did had the club not got these players? No, not a chance. Same to an extent with Lennon, Efe, McGinn and McGeouch were a big reason we did so well.
We need to be more expansive as a club. Stop recruiting English Division 1 or 2 players en masse. Stop recruiting managers with Hibs, Celtic or Scottish backgrounds just because they know the league or some other bizarre reasoning. We are a club that have chronically underperformed, we’ve largely recruited both managers and players the same way in all years (recent especially). We sometimes get lucky but most of the time fail. Change the norm. I mean our recruitment now is very similar to Fenlon, Calderwood and Butcher times.Last edited by madhatter; 27-10-2019 at 03:32 PM.
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27-10-2019 03:28 PM #4
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LD arrived when we were in a state. She shipped out Butcher, cleared the decks and brought in Stubbs. We’d bottomed out, and she got us moving forward.
Since then, we added Craig and May. When Stubbs left, I suspect whatever recruitment process was underway was effectively abandoned when Lennon appeared as a total wild card. It worked well, right up until it didn’t. Lennon’s record when he left was as dismal a run as Heck has been on.
So in comes Heck. We were very publicly linked to Appleton, which fell through, with Heck thought of as a second choice, at least in the media. I wonder if, under pressure from the public failure to land Appleton, this led to Heck getting things that don’t seem to fit our supposed pattern, namely a long contract and, it would seem, a fair amount of control over transfers.
All 3 managers under LD have been backed, so that aspect of her job has been delivered. Have the football staff been up to scratch identifying players and bringing through youngsters? Jury’s out.
Stubbs was a success because he won a cup. His league form though wasn’t what was hoped for. Lennon got us up and had a great first season back, but then fell apart when he couldn’t keep performances up when our midfield left. Heck had a bounce from, I assume, largely not being Lennon, and has been rank rotten since that wore off.
2 of the 3 have been identified by LD and hired, and, in all honesty, they don’t inspire me to think the next guy is going to do markedly better...
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27-10-2019 03:29 PM #5This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Lennon probably forgot more than PH knows about setting up an attacking formation and it is driving the fans crazy with his p I sh formations/selections (PH) he needs to GO regardless.
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27-10-2019 05:03 PM #6This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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27-10-2019 05:28 PM #7This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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27-10-2019 05:37 PM #8madhatterLeft by mutual consent!This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
Strachan, Boozy and Murray.
Strachan, Murray
Strachan, Gray and McGregor
Stubbs
Maloney
The above being some of the suggestions and I’m the one narrowing down the field. Aye, ok then...
There is a whole world outside of the UK. People don’t need Hibs or Celtic connections to be good coaches.
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27-10-2019 05:40 PM #9This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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28-10-2019 07:08 AM #10This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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28-10-2019 08:05 AM #11
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And yet it took three and a half months after the 'suspension' fiasco for Lennon to be confirmed in the Celtic job.
His actions in the days following the hushed-up 'event' didn't strike me as being that of a man who wanted to leave his position as Hibs manager.
'On a whim'?
The wiser fans know that the Stubbs / Lennon period was a brief respite in a history of mismanagement stretching back to the post-Hart era.
'I have read few more egotistical posts'.
You don't seem particularly comfortable with the use of that word so it would probably be better to leave it out. A 'post' cannot be described as 'egotistical' since it has no personality of its own.
'Who cares what you predicted?'
I have as much right as anyone else to post my thoughts in the forum. I didn't compel you to read this thread, let alone reply with some hysterical and emotional claptrap.
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28-10-2019 08:11 AM #12
Neil Lennon had lost it at Hibs. Just because we’ve recruited a terrible replacement doesn’t mean we should’ve stuck by Lennon.
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28-10-2019 08:21 AM #13
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I can't imagine that we'd ever be a point off the bottom, and playing football of this type, under Lennon. He'd have pulled on a pair of boots rather than put up with this.
It isn't just the fact that we've recruited a 'terrible replacement'. It's the fact that a replacement of any other type is nowhere in sight and that our season now involves damage limitation and nothing else.
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