Hibs Head Coach Alan Stubbs insists that it is impossible to legislate for the kind of mistakes that his players are making which has resulted in the club losing four of the first six league games.
With city rivals Hearts sitting top of the table, there are rumbles of disquiet amongst the Hibs fans, mainly against the board, but Stubbs and his backroom staff have also came in for criticism.
When CEO Leeann Dempster announced that Hibs were aiming not only for promotion, but to win the Championship, this was greeted as a sign of ambition by the long suffering supporters but the results so far have been poor and many supporters have been critical of the numbers and quality of the players signed.
Only a last minute winner last against part timers Dumbarton and a freak goal from keeper Mark Oxley against Livingston on the opening day of the campaign have secured points and with high flying Rangers at Ibrox as the next fixture, things are already looking bleak for the Easter Road club.
Last week’s attendance of over 11,000 included many free tickets given away as a gesture of goodwill on the great Pat Stanton’s birthday, but it will be interesting to see the numbers who turn up for the next home game.
Speaking to Hibernian TV after yesterday’s defeat, a dejected Stubbs said: “It’s basic mistakes that we seem to be conceding goals and at this moment in time we are getting severely punished for them.
“It’s great to come back from goals but I’d rather see us getting the first goal and commanding the game but we are doing some silly things and are not helping ourselves.
“You can’t legislate for things like that. You can work on the training ground and do all sorts of shape work.
“The hardest thing in football is scoring goals and the fact that we are giving team opportunities and gifting goals is not helping us and to come from behind is not an easy thing in football to do.
“We have just got to get ourselves together and improve and put the results right, it’s as simple as that. It’s only us and the players that can do that.
“You can either feel sorry for yourself or do something about it and we need to do something about it.
“It was an alarm call for Dominique (Malonga) to come into a game like that with the frenetic pace against defenders who were coming into the back of him. It’s not the strongest part of his game, we want to get balls into his feet and turn but we still have to deal with it. We have to get better quality of service into him. We didn’t get behind them enough and when we did get in there we didn’t capitalise on the opportunities.”
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
