I’m no financial expert but one glance at Hibs’ latest accounts screamed one word: unsustainable.
The club has been run into the ground in the last couple of seasons. An £11m loss over two years is extremely worrying and what smacked me in the face like a Yogi Hughes clearance was the average wage is over £5000 a week. I can’t believe the amount of money that some guys in that squad are on. It’s unsustainable for Hibs and unsustainable for the owners, the Gordon family, who are picking up the tab. People are wondering why players weren’t being signed in January – well that’s the reason. The club is on its knees financially and needs to cut the cloth.
It’s going to be a real hard summer. There’s got to be a massive clear-out, big budget cuts I would assume and there’ll be guys out of contract not being offered the same money they’re on.
There will be players who the manager wants to keep, but they just can’t afford to. Martin Boyle for instance is probably the highest earner at the club and is out of contract in a few months. If he wants to stay, he’ll need to accept a much lower wage.
It reminds me of when I left the club 20 years ago. Tony Mowbray came in as the manager, tapped me on the shoulder on his first day and was blunt: ‘Tam, we can’t afford to keep you on this salary’.
I’ve mentioned before that, by the age of 22 or 23, I had signed 15 years worth of contracts at Hibs which is incredible. I got two five-year deals under Alex McLeish then Franck Sauzee and basically if I played I was the highest earner at the club.
They had been signed off when everything was rosy in the SPL and people were paying good money. Bobby Williamson replaced Franck in 2002, took one look at my contract and said: ‘how the f*** did you get that? David Copperfield must be your agent’.
By the time Mowbray came in and was tasked with cutting the wage bill it had reached the stage he needed me out. It’s the same now. David Gray will know it’s time to streamline the squad.
David is going to be shopping in a market that previous managers have turned their nose up at and the fans are just going to have to get used to players of a lesser calibre coming in on lower money. There’s going to be some real hard decisions and players are going to have to accept lower salaries to stay at the club.
This doesn’t have to mean they can’t improve on the park though. Kilmarnock and St Mirren finished above them in the Euro spots last season with far smaller budgets.
When Mowbray cut his squad they went on to finish third. He had the benefit of Williamson having blooded the golden generation of Scott Brown, Steven Whittaker and Garry O’Connor before him. But Mowbray was also very astute in the transfer market.
He signed players from academies. He signed David Murphy from Birmingham’s academy, he signed Dean Shiels from Arsenal, Sam Morrow from Ipswich, young players on low money and they all did well for him.
He signed Guillaume Beuzelin from Le Havre and Boozy sat beside me in the dressing room. I remember he pulled out his first wage packet, pointed to the number at the bottom and he said, ‘is that my tax Tam?’ I said, ‘no, that’s your wage’. Boozy was on buttons.
Focus this summer will also be on head of recruitment Garvan Stewart who is going to be scouring England looking for gems. There’s players out there, you’ve just got to go and find them because the days of Hibs paying big money are gone when you look at those latest figures.
Who’s to blame? Well the Gordons write the cheques. But it’s then up to the recruitment team to get value for money, the now departed chief executive Ben Kensell and chairman Malcolm McPherson and the players themselves who haven’t produced the goods. Everybody’s got to look at themselves.
It’s no coincidence Kensell left his position a few weeks before these results came out. When you look at his comments last year, when he said that the garden would be rosier this year financially, it’s laughable. It’s a whole lot worse.
Kensell wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on if he was still the CEO of the club. Thank goodness David Gray and his players are currently producing on the park.
Friday’s 1-0 Scottish Cup win at Ayr made it 11 unbeaten and just one loss in 14. Fantastic. They look a hard to beat team now, they’re organised, they’ve got a way of playing, the 3-5-2. It’s not pretty at times, but football’s not pretty in Scotland.
There’s a steeliness, they’ve got pace up front, they just put it in behind. They put crosses in the box, they got Friday’s goal off a long throw. All those things are effective in this league, so I think that David’s now finally got a set of players that are tuned into that, they know how to get results.
It’s been a great turnaround and long may it continue. They deserved some luck of the draw after beating Ayr. Instead the got a stinker away to Celtic again. Parkhead in both cups in one season is really, really unfortunate.
Look Queen’s Park showed anything is possible by beating Rangers. But it’s going to take something extra special. The chance of finishing third is more realistic.
To be guaranteed at least a Conference League group stage spot makes the race for third massive. Especially after those eye-watering financials.