Hibs address cup disappointment as Jack Ross credited for meeting four out of five targets

Hibs sporting director Graeme Mathie has offered a stout defence of manager Jack Ross and the team that secured the club’s first top three finish in 16 years and challenged in the latter stages of the cup competitions.

Well aware that many fans are still smarting that those semi final and final spots did not ultimately reap silverware, he says everyone at the club, including himself, the manager and the players, share the disappointment.

But he says it is his job to consider the bigger picture and that when considering the targets set when Ross joined the club in November 2019, there remains plenty to be proud of.

“When we spoke to Jack about becoming Hibs manager, there were probably four or five things that we really wanted him to do,” Mathie said.

Hibs manager Jack Ross has delivered on several of the targets his bosses set for him when he first joined the club. Photo by Alan Harvey / SNS Group

“One, to have the team competing at the top end of the league, meaning European qualification, two, to bring in players who could add some value for the club, three, bring through young players from the academy and create value by developing them, then another thing was to play an attack-minded style. I know that has been questioned at times but if you look at the number of goals we have scored and chances we have created in games then we’ve played an attack-minded style.

“This isn’t us making excuses because there aren’t any. We had terrific opportunities to win silverware and everyone at the club, especially in the football department, is incredibly disappointed we didn’t do that because it would have capped off a terrific season but if you reflect back on that initial conversation, we were around 8th in the league, a million miles away from knocking back seven figure bids for three of our players but that happened within just over a year of Jack coming in.

“Josh Doig coming through has been a huge positive and there have been others around the team so when you look at the job Jack has done over the piece, and four of the five things can be ticked off, I don’t think you can describe it as anything other than positive, incredibly positive.

“The challenge for us now is to find a way to make all of that a regular occurrence but hopefully go a stage further in the cup.”

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