When Hibs are good they are good - but when they are bad they're bloody awful.
That’s the worry as pursuit of a European spot continued with a stinkbomb display at the weekend against Motherwell.
Talk of top three Premiership finishes and Hibs being the best of the rest have produced enough hot air to power a blimp the size of Lochend.
But a reality check is required if big-club ambition is to be matched with action as another balloon was burst on Saturday.
Hibs are nowhere near good enough to just turn up and think they can win. For Motherwell at the weekend, read defeats at home to Livingston and Ross County. Not just beaten by the way, properly turned over.
On Saturday it could have been more than 2-0, three or four wouldn’t have surprised me.
My belief is that Hibs should be the third biggest club in the country, not just this season, every season, challenging, winning the occasional trophy.
The infrastructure is now in place to push on and displace Aberdeen as the third force, a far cry from my time at the club when we had to hunt for training space and lift dog sh** and glass off the surface before starting a warm-up.
Watching the likes of Frank Sauzee and Russell Latapy climbing into their cars to head around the city looking for somewhere to train...crazy. One of the places we went to was Wardie, a lot of Hibs fans will know it. It’s a rugby ground and we used to arrive with goals strapped to the top of the mini bus.
After training we would have to climb back into the cars and head back to Easter Road for our lunch. It was criminal for a club the size of Hibs at that time to not even have a training ground.
Now there are no excuses, the base at Tranent is first class, the boys have everything at their disposal and there’s no council official telling them they need to get off the park as it’s double booked. That’s what happened in my era.
If you have the right attitude and are willing to work then you will only get better in those conditions.
The squad also needs to be developed and improved over the next three transfer windows and hopefully Jack Ross will be there to oversee it.
Then we will see a really strong Hibs. I’m convinced of it and whether Christian Doidge is a part of that future remains to be seen as he’s currently enduring what was once known at Easter Road as a Tam McManus.
As a player I was a six-or-seven goal a season man, never prolific but when they did come, boy, they were usually wonderstrikes straight out of the top drawer.
Google my strike for Colorado Rapids, a 50-yarder with swerve which flew into the net. It was helped by playing at altitude as we were thousands of metres above sea level. A collectors item, as there weren’t many.
When I was at Dunfermline I went on a drought which would have made the Sahara blush and it’s hard to break the habit. It was horrible and I sympathise with Christian as the thing which strikes me about him is that he genuinely cares.
He’s trying everything, you can see it and he’s working his ba**s off.
There were two good chances he missed against Motherwell and what people don’t see is the mental side of it.
As a striker when you are on a horrendous run then the actual goal becomes the size of a match box. The opposite is true when the goals are flying in, when your confidence is up, you feel as though the goals are massive.
Christian is a good player but he needs a goal, badly.
He’s reached that 13-game mark without one and there’s no hiding the fact that is a very long time, not since a 2-1 win over Alloa in the Betfred Cup in December.
Just as scoring goals becomes a happy knack, missing chances can also become a rut you can’t get out of, he needs to work his way out of it.
It’s vital the manager sticks with him, it would be an easy out for everyone if Christian was to drop out of the team which is next up against St Johnstone.
Kevin Nisbet has been waiting in the wings. He came off the bench on Saturday so it will be interesting to see if Jack sticks with Christian.
If he does keep the faith then Christian will need to repay him. A manager can only do and say so much but keeping him in the team is so important but it can’t go on indefinitely.
