Calderwood orders Hibs to fight for SPL status

Colin Calderwood today urged his shell-shocked Easter Road stars to put their Scottish Cup exit behind them and to prepare for a fight for SPL survival.

The Hibs boss admitted his side had plumbed the "depths of despair" as they went down 1-0 to Second Division part-timers, the replay the fourth game in succession Hibs have failed to score.

But now Calderwood, who has seen Hibs win just twice in 14 matches since taking over from John Hughes, insists all attention must be on hauling the club away from the foot of the table where they languish just four points above basement outfit Hamilton.

And while Calderwood has failed thus far to attract any new faces to Edinburgh during the January transfer window, chairman Rod Petrie has assured fans everything possible is being done to do so while promising the under-pressure manager will receive full backing from the boardroom.

Admitting he'd hoped Tuesday night's trip to Somerset Park would represent a "bottoming out" in Hibs' fortunes and the prospect of a decent Scottish Cup run offering a "crumb of comfort," Calderwood today admitted the future is far bleaker.

He said: "Now we have to fight for Premier League survival. Where we are at the moment, not being able to score goals and looking as if we will concede in most games, that's a recipe for a long season."

The former Scotland defender agreed no-one at Easter Road would like to admit a club of Hibs' stature was in trouble but he candidly observed: "If you were four points off the top you would say you were in contention for the league title, but we are four points off the bottom so we are in it."

Hibs' next attempt to begin the climb to safety begins when they travel to Fir Park to face Motherwell but they will have to do so without Lewis Stevenson who missed the Ayr trip with a broken toe. While Calderwood doesn't expect the injury to rule Stevenson out for too long, he insisted the more pressing issue was somehow raising his squad's shattered morale.

He said: "It will take some big personalities on Saturday but I am looking forward to seeing the response. It's the job of the coaching staff to drag them up and give them the platform to go again and win although one victory isn't going to solve it."

Meanwhile, Petrie, again the target of disaffected supporters who are calling on him to "splash the cash" to aid Calderwood, insisted the club was working tirelessly behind the scenes to attract fresh talent.

In a statement on the club's website, the chairman said: "We will continue to support the manager to the very limit of our resources in bringing new players to the club and shaping the squad for the way he wants it. We have been working consistently with Colin since he arrived to identify how we can improve things in this transfer window and again in the summer.

"The lack of new faces so far is not a 'policy decision' or the lack of effort from the manager and his coaching staff or willingness and resources from the board. This is a difficult window in which to make changes and these things tend to happen towards the end of the window rather than at the start. We will re-double our efforts to add some fresh faces in this window for the fight ahead."