Well, the transfer window has slammed shut again and Hibs fans are left scratching their heads in bewilderment once more as the board fail in their duties to entice a player worthy of paying the inflated entrance fee to Easter Road to watch.
Most fans would have loved to see one such player, Leigh Griffiths, return but our board once again offered no more than lip service to the supporters and failed to get their man.
It didn’t have to be Griffiths, anyone at all who could liven our prospects of an immediate return to the top flight, just a big name to show ambition but it didn’t happen and showed, one more time to add to the list, Hibernian simply accepts being second best.
A 2-1 defeat to Alloa showed the club up for all it’s shortcomings and with an injury to star striker Farid El Alagui effectively ruling him out for the majority of the season, transfer deadline day gave new CEO Leanne Dempster a chance to make her mark and provide the funds required to back Alan Stubbs and recruit players capable of making an immediate impact on the field.
No disrespect to Dylan McGeouch or Jake Sinclair, the two loanees who arrived at the club on Monday but Hibs are in desperate need of leadership on the park which is something you’re unlikely to get from youngsters with a handful of senior appearances between them.
Dempster has urged the fans to back her vision for the club but it’s increasingly difficult when it appears she herself isn’t even backing her manager.
He’s managed only four permanent signings since arriving in June and has again relied on loan signings which is a route Hibs have been down before with little success.
The fans are sick to the back teeth of the false statements emanating from Dempster who promised them a promotion challenge but four games into the season the club are already nine points adrift of Hearts who sit atop the league.
Can the CEO tell the rank and file support what happened to all the season ticket money? After the release of so many players at the end of last season and the reductions taken by those who stayed, there should still be money in the pot when you add in greater sponsorship deals with Marathonbet and Crabbie’s plus the £500,000 parachute payment from the SPFL which was received when relegation was confirmed.
So what’s happened to it all? Will the fans receive an explanation or are they meant to sit and take it like they have for years under Rod Petrie?
The club has promised more openness with those who plough their hard earned cash into Hibs but they’re receiving nothing in return.
Dempster has to realise, unlike her previous counterpart, that the fans disillusionment and apathy is the worst it’s ever been in my 30 years of following Hibs and it’s not getting and better under her watch.
The ‘Quality over Quantity’ spin has been regurgitated many times since the boardroom reshuffle in the summer but little has changed in the grand scheme of things.
Supporters pay their money to watch a product on the park, not to listen to tantalising soundbites which never come to fruition and no-one can blame them now they’ve had enough.
Our winds of change have been a pathetic re-run of transfer windows past and the true change can only come around when the board show a dedication to the team rather than their own self indulgence.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me is an old saying but one very apt to how Hibernian have been ran recently. Dempster was brought in and promised things would change. She’s fooled me once, there won’t be a repeat.
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Like you ive followed Hibs for over 30 years (38 in fact) and I cant remember things on the playing side ever being as bad as this. Weve a group of young players whor nowhere as good as they think they are. I make that statement following their own addition that they thought they “just had to turn up at Alloa”! There are no leaders on the park and liam Craig running about like a spoilt brats fooling no one.
Two previous relegations we stuttered at the start but went on to win both promotions convincingly. (Remember Stranraer at home?) This time is different having Rangers, Hearts and Falkirk fighting for promotion. So why the lack of quality senior players to help push on the young guys? It can only mean we are writing off this season and looking to build for a push on promtion in 2016.
Some of our own fan’s are admitting it could be a couple of years before we get back up. That for me is totally disgraceful. I also look at the likes of Dunfermline. A club with as rich a European heritage as us. They used to have a massive away support, one that could fill the old dunbar end. Well before our young player’s get too cocky playing for the Hibees they should look at Dunfermline today and think that COULD be us in five years.
John, I’m generally a positive Hibby who can see merits in most things the club does but the past few years have knocked the stuffing out of me. I actually believed things would change this summer. We’d had the mass clear out which was required and had been since Collins time at Easter Road when he filled the squad with players based on fitness rather than skill and IMO we’ve suffered since then. LD had the chance to make an impact by making a dynamic signing but she’s failed in her duties so it makes you wonder who’s pulling her strings. The backroom restructure in regards to George Craig, Mathie et al could have waited until finances were improved and we were back in the top flight. The board seem to have accepted we’ll be in the Championship for at least two years and that’s a disgrace. The false promises are a disgrace. The club is a disgrace. Welcome to crowds of 5k until the hatchet man, his sidekick Forsyth and Farmer are removed from power.
Pretty hard hitting article from you there FS and have to say it’s an unusual angle for you to take. As mentioned in the forum I’m happy to give Dempster 18-24 months to get the off field stuff right but she’s suffering from the RP & STF fall-out as well. Granted I never thought our on-field performance would be as poor as they have been but there is still time to turn it around. I like Stubbs and LD and hope they’re both the right people for their jobs.
Hibs have been slowly dying for years. A death by a thousand cuts.
I realise a lot of our younger fans must read our opinions and think “whinging auld gits” but Franck but weve supported them through tough times before. To follow them through two promotions I had to suffer two relegations and the Mercer takeover. I never thought about walking away and I never left a game early. However, whats going on with the present board is disgraceful and its pushing away thousands of fans from the club. Not hundreds but thousands. So yes younger fans will question our support but they have decades to go to understand our sheer bloody frustration at the mess we’re in.