What times to be a Hibs supporter.
Bottom of the league, a manager who has become a toxic brand, sections of the support ever more alienated from the vision the board have for the club. And sections of the support who are consistently voting with their feet.
A demonstration is planned before today's game with second bottom Aberdeen.
Too soon at this early stage of the season?
Perhaps. But Hibs have been honking for 18 months now. That the demonstration will target both Colin Calderwood and Rod Petrie suggests that some fans are worried about the direction the club is taking both and off the pitch.
I don't expect many fans will pick up the placards today. But nor do I think these are concerns that can be completely ignored.
My own view is that Calderwood is struggling and unhappy. He needs a run of form soon or his position will be become untenable.
But replacing him will not be a magic cure for the ills of the club.
The Hibs board have their admirers inside and outside the club. I'd say they were arrogant, unlistening and overpaid. It's the sort of combination that a Scottish club can ill afford right now.
Some fans will say that Hibs are lucky to have Rod Petrie and his automaton acolytes, that their fiscal conservatism is to be applauded and they do the best they can for the club on the pitch.
The annual accounts will be published soon. The results will be spun to within an inch of their lives. But I fear they'll show that the emperor is getting ever closer to a state of nakedness.
That the team is the best Hibs can hope for is baloney. Hibs have become the team other sides love to play. The final league position last season and the current plight show that the best this board is doing is not achieving parity with clubs of more modest means.
It is, frankly, a mess. An unhappy club with a support base that is fighting apathy and splintering into different factions.
If Hibs lose today the pressure on Calderwood and the board will mount. The board's default position at such times of crisis is to engineer a managerial reshuffle.
At the moment that would simply be more papering over cracks. It would also suggest that, once again, the club's recruitment policy is flawed.
Is anybody at Hibs big enough to take responsibility for that?
This is, of course, a personal opinion. I know others disagree. I know that if Hibs lose today there will be supporters who blame the defeat on the negativity of fans like me.
There are no easy answers at Easter Road. But someone better find some soon because the situation is becoming increasingly desperate.
Aberdeen have also struggled this season, the lack of goals a common theme.
Hibs have Garry O'Connor to score goals. They have very little else. I'm writing amid a fug of pessimism. But I'm finding it hard to see Hibs getting three points today.
This depressing soap opera still has more time to run yet.
Showing posts with label Hibs v Aberdeen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hibs v Aberdeen. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
SPL: Memories of Eddie Turnbull Dominate
The starter before the main course. The stale garlic bread with mouldy mozzarella before the Old Firm's Wagyu steak.
The bottom six chunter out of view with everything decided and nowt left to play for. Inverness are safe in seventh - and how we thank the split for making seventh place such an aspirational target - and Hamilton are doon.
Turn up, play. And get the hell out of there to whatever holiday spots an SPL wage can stretch to in these days of austerity. A weekend in Skegness? A day trip to Blackpool? An all-inclusive lad's week in Magaluf?
The mind boggles.
It's been, frankly, pathetic stuff. When the history of these football clubs is written the SPL season of 2010/11 will be but a minor footnote, barely even glanced at by anyone but the diehard or the masochist.
Eddie Turnbull, however, looms large in the history of both clubs. And his contribution to both will be righly saluted at Easter Road.
A player in the Famous Five, Hibs' quintet of attacking talent that echoes through the decades.
A cup winning manager at Aberdeen, dispatched north to kick a slumbering giant into shape.
And then back to Easter Road to preside over the technicolour 1970s, to manage players with flowing locks and wide flares that he couldn't understand and to turn them into a footballing force that he understood perfectly.
The outpouring of tributes that greeted the news of his death and the turnout from the great, the good, the not so good and the ordinary fan at his funeral earlier this week hinted at a connection with people that Turnbull in his abrasive prime might have found surprising.
By the end he must have realised the respect he was held in. Even so the genuine emotion hints at something deeper than the bond between teammates, between manager and player, between fans and footballing hero.
Turnbull served on the vicious Arctic Convoys during the Second World War. The astonishingly high attrition rate meant many of his friends and comrades didn't survive.
Turnbull came home. He resurrected his football career and became a key part of the Hibs team that opened up the 1950s and early 1960s in Scottish football, an era of possibility when any team good enough could win the league, when Hibs and Dundee could excel in the European Cup and the Old Firm were often reduced to also rans.
At Aberdeen he won a Scottish Cup and proved he could go toe to toe with Jock Stein, proved that Stein was not the solitary member of that wonderful cast of football men left in Scotland.
On his return to Hibs he somehow cajoled - at times maybe bullied - a team of local talents and clever signings into playing what was, if you'll allow me to borrow the hyperbole of a tribute song, the "best brand of football the world's ever seen."
When it ended at Hibs, Turnbull walked away. His club car was the only pay off for a relationship that had lasted over 30 years, three decades when he was never richly renumerated for bringing the very best of times to Leith.
So Turnbull's passing brought to the fore a jumble of different emotions. Sorrow that his is a dying generation not always venerated enough for the hardships they bore. Celebration of a footballing career that scaled the heights.
And nostalgia that with his death we move ever further away from an era when Scottish football seemed to have the world at its feet, when the game was simpler, perhaps purer.
Celebration will be the order of the day at Easter Road. Fans of both clubs will be encouraged to show their appreciation for Turnbull. I'd guess they'll do that out of respect for both the man and for his era.
Tales of Turnbull's career will be told again.
Of the great Lawrie Reilly taking and missing a penalty and Turnbull offering a predictably forthright assessment of Reilly's chances of ever being allowed to do so again.
Of Joe Harper asking to be treated like a man and of Turnbull promptly smacking him in the face to welcome him to maturity.
Of a turn of phrase that Pat Stanton described as a habit of "never using two words when one swear word would do."
Of the late Alan Gordon, elegant and erudite as he was, being told that "the trouble with you Gordon is a' yer brains are in yer heid."
Of the directness of the advice and help he would still offer to the current bunch of Hibs players.
And also, of course, of the great player with the belting shot who held his own with the best of the best at Hibs.
Of the manager who was loved and respected by the players for his commitment to them and to playing football properly. Loved even as they cursed him for his temper and his demands.
Of a keen football thinker who brought innovation and attacking flair to Pittodrie and Easter Road.
Easter Road will be all about Eddie Turnbull.
The game will be secondary, will be in his shadow.
Given the fare he was watching at the stadium until just a couple of weeks ago he might have expected nothing less.
Strange league or not, relegation is relegation and bottom place means Hamilton are for the chop. They came close to keeping the fight alive until the final game. Given they've looked all but lifeless for most of the season that would have been quite an achievement.
But it wasn't to be. This is their farewell.
The end of the road for a number of Inverness players as well.
For what it's worth, an away win.
St Mirren have done enough to keep ahead of Hamilton. That is not a lofy aim. But it's enough for survival so really it's mission accomplished.
St Johnstone would be enjoying a much brighter season if they didn't carry all the attacking threat of a retreating Italian army.
On which lazy, countryist, military stereotype I will predict an away win and bid the bottom six a hearty and somewhat relieved farewell.
The bottom six chunter out of view with everything decided and nowt left to play for. Inverness are safe in seventh - and how we thank the split for making seventh place such an aspirational target - and Hamilton are doon.
Turn up, play. And get the hell out of there to whatever holiday spots an SPL wage can stretch to in these days of austerity. A weekend in Skegness? A day trip to Blackpool? An all-inclusive lad's week in Magaluf?
The mind boggles.
Hibs v Aberdeen
Interest here at least. Not in two teams that have let down their fans all season. Aberdeen lost a game 9-0. Hibs stitched together a run of form so bad that decades old records were tumbling right, left and centre.It's been, frankly, pathetic stuff. When the history of these football clubs is written the SPL season of 2010/11 will be but a minor footnote, barely even glanced at by anyone but the diehard or the masochist.
Eddie Turnbull, however, looms large in the history of both clubs. And his contribution to both will be righly saluted at Easter Road.
A player in the Famous Five, Hibs' quintet of attacking talent that echoes through the decades.
A cup winning manager at Aberdeen, dispatched north to kick a slumbering giant into shape.
And then back to Easter Road to preside over the technicolour 1970s, to manage players with flowing locks and wide flares that he couldn't understand and to turn them into a footballing force that he understood perfectly.
The outpouring of tributes that greeted the news of his death and the turnout from the great, the good, the not so good and the ordinary fan at his funeral earlier this week hinted at a connection with people that Turnbull in his abrasive prime might have found surprising.
By the end he must have realised the respect he was held in. Even so the genuine emotion hints at something deeper than the bond between teammates, between manager and player, between fans and footballing hero.
Turnbull served on the vicious Arctic Convoys during the Second World War. The astonishingly high attrition rate meant many of his friends and comrades didn't survive.
Turnbull came home. He resurrected his football career and became a key part of the Hibs team that opened up the 1950s and early 1960s in Scottish football, an era of possibility when any team good enough could win the league, when Hibs and Dundee could excel in the European Cup and the Old Firm were often reduced to also rans.
At Aberdeen he won a Scottish Cup and proved he could go toe to toe with Jock Stein, proved that Stein was not the solitary member of that wonderful cast of football men left in Scotland.
On his return to Hibs he somehow cajoled - at times maybe bullied - a team of local talents and clever signings into playing what was, if you'll allow me to borrow the hyperbole of a tribute song, the "best brand of football the world's ever seen."
When it ended at Hibs, Turnbull walked away. His club car was the only pay off for a relationship that had lasted over 30 years, three decades when he was never richly renumerated for bringing the very best of times to Leith.
So Turnbull's passing brought to the fore a jumble of different emotions. Sorrow that his is a dying generation not always venerated enough for the hardships they bore. Celebration of a footballing career that scaled the heights.
And nostalgia that with his death we move ever further away from an era when Scottish football seemed to have the world at its feet, when the game was simpler, perhaps purer.
Celebration will be the order of the day at Easter Road. Fans of both clubs will be encouraged to show their appreciation for Turnbull. I'd guess they'll do that out of respect for both the man and for his era.
Tales of Turnbull's career will be told again.
Of the great Lawrie Reilly taking and missing a penalty and Turnbull offering a predictably forthright assessment of Reilly's chances of ever being allowed to do so again.
Of Joe Harper asking to be treated like a man and of Turnbull promptly smacking him in the face to welcome him to maturity.
Of a turn of phrase that Pat Stanton described as a habit of "never using two words when one swear word would do."
Of the late Alan Gordon, elegant and erudite as he was, being told that "the trouble with you Gordon is a' yer brains are in yer heid."
Of the directness of the advice and help he would still offer to the current bunch of Hibs players.
And also, of course, of the great player with the belting shot who held his own with the best of the best at Hibs.
Of the manager who was loved and respected by the players for his commitment to them and to playing football properly. Loved even as they cursed him for his temper and his demands.
Of a keen football thinker who brought innovation and attacking flair to Pittodrie and Easter Road.
Easter Road will be all about Eddie Turnbull.
The game will be secondary, will be in his shadow.
Given the fare he was watching at the stadium until just a couple of weeks ago he might have expected nothing less.
Hamilton v Inverness
The success of the bottom six visit the condemned men. Inverness are assured in seventh and look likely to top fifth placed Kilmarnock's points tally. What a strange league we stress over.Strange league or not, relegation is relegation and bottom place means Hamilton are for the chop. They came close to keeping the fight alive until the final game. Given they've looked all but lifeless for most of the season that would have been quite an achievement.
But it wasn't to be. This is their farewell.
The end of the road for a number of Inverness players as well.
For what it's worth, an away win.
St Mirren v St Johnstone
Given the end of term feel to this one I wouldn't be surprised if the players arrive in casual clothes, brandishing board games and pestering the managers to let them outside for a game of rounders.St Mirren have done enough to keep ahead of Hamilton. That is not a lofy aim. But it's enough for survival so really it's mission accomplished.
St Johnstone would be enjoying a much brighter season if they didn't carry all the attacking threat of a retreating Italian army.
On which lazy, countryist, military stereotype I will predict an away win and bid the bottom six a hearty and somewhat relieved farewell.
Friday, January 07, 2011
The Best Birthday Present
The programme pictured is from the first match played at Easter Road after I was born in 1980.
A league game against Celtic. And a goal for George Best. Dodgy video footage below of Best sending Peter Latchford into the back of the net along with the ball.
Lessons to be learned? Maybe I am a Jonah. Hibs ended the season relegated in bottom place.
In those days we had a 10 team league. But Dundee joined Hibs in heading for the First Division with a system of two up, two down in place.
Aberdeen were the champions, pipping Celtic by a point with a 5-0 demolition of, as you might have guessed, Hibs in their penultimate game.
As Aberdeen were playing at Easter Road, Celtic were toiling to a goalless draw against St Mirren. With ten minutes to go Celtic were awarded a crucial penalty. Then, after consulting with his linesman, the referee changed his mind and Celtic's chance was gone.
Alex Ferguson had his first major trophy and the Scottish championship was taken away from the Old Firm for the first time in 15 years.
A ten team league? Referee and linesmen consulting over penalties? Hibs woeful?
Aye, I've seen a lot of changes over the years.
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Friday, December 24, 2010
SPL: Boxing Day Bonanza
Well, maybe. Weather permitting. At the moment all the games are on. But that's subject to change. Motherwell are working on a burst pipe but are apparently confident the TV game will go ahead. A decision on the Hibs game and Aberdeen's ability to get to Edinburgh is being made tomorrow.
Fingers crossed.
Celtic v St Johnstone
It's nice to be home at Christmas. Even nice to get a win though. Lennon's lads have been lacking at home recently. Poultry related lethargy and poor form will give St Johnstone hope. A home win for me though.
Dundee Utd v Hamilton
United haven't played since 20 November. Hamilton since 27 November. Refreshed or rusty? Home win.
Hibernian v Aberdeen
Hibs capitulation at Pittodrie in October temporarily lifted some of the pressure on Mark McGhee. Aberdeen haven't won a league game since, sit bottom of the league and have a new manager. Can Craig Brown turn it around? Hibs' own revolution under Colin Calderwood has been stuttery. Draw.
Inverness CT v St Mirren
SPL shock troops Inverness host St Mirren who, under Danny Lennon, have been better than some predicted but not strong enough to be safe. Home win.
Kilmarnock v Hearts
Both teams off the back of 1-1 draws, Kilmarnock's at Celtic and Hearts at home to Inverness. It's a measure of both team's season that neither manager seemed happy to settle for a point. They might have to again though. Draw. GAME POSTPONED
Motherwell v Rangers
Will this game go ahead? Possibly. Will managerless spring a surprise? Possibly not. Away win.
SFL Postponements
Matches off on Sunday, 26 DecemberScottish First Division
Queen of the South v Dundee
Stirling Albion v Morton
Second Division
Airdrie United v East Fife
Brechin City v Ayr United
Dumbarton v Forfar Athletic
Peterhead v Stenhousemuir
Third Division
Annan Athletic v Berwick Rangers
Elgin City v Clyde
Monday 27, December
First Division
Ross County v Cowdenbeath
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