As the dust settles on 2020/21 there’s a possibility that a whole season’s work is defined by two visits to Hampden, where St Johnstone got the better of Hibs twice.
I’ve been feeling scunnered by last Saturday’s performance at Hampden all week. It was a really poor 90 minutes where we failed to lay a meaningful glove on the opposition. The lack of a reaction to a penalty save with 15 minutes to play summed the whole afternoon up.
It was unacceptable and a really disappointing way to finish the season after so much good feeling in the build up.
If we’d lost 3-2 or battled hard to get back into the game and fallen short then a majority of supporters would have accepted it as just not being our day, tipped our cap to Callum Davidson for an incredible achievement and taken ourselves up the road for some self-pity.
It was the manner of the defeat (against the team that had swept us aside at Hampden already this season) that really leaves you in a bad mood.
With fans still unable to attend Hampden we were all forced to watch on television for the last time this season – hopefully it was the final Hibs game we have to watch on screen for a long time with supporters back soon.
I’ve said all season that watching on TV with multiple slow-mos and replays has given all of us a different perspective on what we’re seeing. What’s for sure is that what we’ve seen has been heavily affected by Covid’s impact on Scottish football and with that in mind I find it hard to be too critical of the players and manager this season.
The cup final was a massive opportunity missed and a real disappointment – but a bit of perspective never does any harm.
Will the season stand out as a brilliant one for years to come? No. Will the season mark the end of Jack Ross at Hibs? Despite what some fans are saying online, almost certainly not. Has this season been an improvement on our last few? Yes. Can the season be a springboard to kick on next season when supporters return to Easter Road? Here’s hoping so.
I really hope this season isn’t defined by the losses at Hampden, we’ve made too much progress as a club in difficult times for that to be the case.
The fact some supporters are calling for the manager to be sacked after a third-place finish and four appearances at Hampden in one season is either because we’ve suddenly got very lofty expectations of the club or it’s a sign of how far we’ve come in just a couple of years.
Some within the Hibs support seem content with devaluing the achievement of being the third best side in the country over 38 games because ‘the standard of the league is poor’. I don’t buy that.
Rangers haven’t been poor. St Johnstone haven’t been poor. Livingston haven’t been poor. What people mean by ‘the league has been poor’ is that Aberdeen have been poor. That – to some – means a third-place finish was the least we could expect – but third place still had to be earned over the course of the season by a squad much smaller in size than we’d normally see at Hibs.
If nothing else, the 2020/21 season has provided Hibs with a platform to improve and grow into a side which is regularly competing in Europe and at the right end of the cup competitions in the years to come.
Supporters have backed the club financially over the last 12 months and in Ron Gordon Hibs appear to have an owner who’s not afraid to hold on to our best assets until the time is right. With fans returning to Easter Road next season and all of the financial bonuses that come with it, the summer provides a big opportunity to continue to move forward as a club.
In Matt Macey Hibs have a decent replacement for Ofir Marciano who leaves the club after four successful seasons. One of the only positives from the cup final last weekend was Macey’s performance and penalty save – he is big (6ft7 by the way), commanding and appears to be able to keep the ball out the net when required.
Behind Macey is Kevin Dabrowski; a product of the Development Team and still only 22 years old, Dabrowski has performed well out on loan and will provide some longer-term continuity in the first team while hopefully challenging Macey for the gloves.
Josh Doig has come into the team this season and been a revelation. Awarded the Young Player of the Year at last night’s End of Season Awards, Doig has made huge strides in his early career at left back and has been one of the big positives on the pitch this season.
Whether Doig sticks around long enough for any of us to see him play in the flesh next year remains to be seen but if he gets a move down south then he’s deserved it and it’s reassuring to see a youth product be given a chance in the first team at the age of 18.
Alex Gogic has come in this season and filled a massive hole in the team. He’ll be meme’d for the summer after his attempt to block David Wotherspoon’s cross in the final but aside from that we have a solid midfielder who allows others around him to play – he’ll be an important part of what Hibs try and build next season.
In forward areas Martin Boyle has had a strong season again; Kevin Nibset has joined the club, scored goals, made the Scotland squad for the Euros and been linked with a multi-million pound move to England within less than a year; Christian Doidge has worked tirelessly to allow others around him to reap the rewards and fired us to the Scottish Cup final with a goal in every round.
Jamie Murphy and Chris Cadden have given us enough reasons to believe they will be big players at Easter Road next season with prolonged runs of fitness – they are forward thinking players who are happy to take men on and will be exciting to watch when we’re back at the games.
Scott Allan appears to have come through his loan spell at Inverness better than when he went in and in Daniel Mackay we have snapped up one of the brightest prospects in the Championship who will be looking to make an impression next term.
Rather than call for an inquiry and make wholesale changes this summer Hibs will need to replace any possible departures (Porteous, Nisbet, Doig) and add four or five others – if they can do that then the squad will be in a really strong position come the start of the 2021/22 season.
The approaching transfer window is likely to be the first one where Jack Ross can confidently make a big mark on the squad. His first in January 2020 was filled primarily with loan players after inheriting Paul Heckingbottom’s side six weeks earlier.
The exception was Paul McGinn who has featured heavily since his arrival and was backed by many of his teammates for Players’ Player of the Year after his first full season at the club.
The two transfer windows which followed were during a season with no fans and limited budgets due to Covid-19 – additions in those windows have turned a seventh-place team into a third-place team in 12 months.
Ambition is something all supporters share for the club and disappointment in the cups this season is going to be a powerful driver for those still wearing green and white after the summer.
As expectations get higher, the rewards get bigger. We’ve finished third and narrowly missed out on an incredible season by falling short in the cup final. We’ve got a crack at Europe to look forward to and a summer of transfer speculation to endure before we’re back to do it all over again in July.
Fingers crossed the next time we see the Hibees play it’ll be in real life rather than on a screen.
See you behind the goals.
The East Stand 