Icy chill swirls around Hibs after graffiti as David Gray ponders huge call to avoid Aberdeen omen

Head coach could change his keeper - but a win could take Hibs off bottom spot

The last time Aberdeen visited Easter Road, it signalled the end for a Hibs manager.

Nick Montgomery was sacked less than 48 hours after a 4-0 hammering by the Dons at the end of last season. That defeat, as galling as it was, came at a time when Hibs were sitting comfortably safe in the Premiership, consigned to bottom-six football but free from relegation worries. The same cannot be said now as the duo prepare to go head to head again in Leith on Tuesday night.

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David Gray was in the dugout that spring day alongside Montgomery as an assistant and was given caretaker duties for the rest of the season thereafter. He did enough to land the head coach role permanently in the summer, but as the leaves have fallen off the trees, so have Hibs down the table. With autumn about to end, an icy chill swirls around the Edinburgh club.

The Hibs players train ahead of Tuesday's Premiership match against Aberdeen.The Hibs players train ahead of Tuesday's Premiership match against Aberdeen.
The Hibs players train ahead of Tuesday's Premiership match against Aberdeen. | SNS Group

With one win to their name, Hibs are bottom of the Premiership on eight points after 13 matches. It is a dire record, one that is worse than the runs Jack Ross, Shaun Maloney, Lee Johnson and Montgomery put together before the axe fell on them. Hibs are desperate to give club legend Gray, just 36 years old, time to turn it around - but the clock is not on his side.

Given a public vote of confidence by the Hibs board earlier this month, the team followed that up by losing 4-1 to Dundee at the weekend. Jordan Obita's 12th-minute red card was Hibs' fourth in seven matches. Indiscipline and poor individual decisions are rife.

Hibs finished just two points behind seventh-placed Aberdeen at the end of last season. They have motored in different directions since. The Dons, under their own new manager in Jimmy Thelin, have lost the same number of matches Hibs have won in the league and sit second. They will be keen to rediscover the winning feeling after going down to St Mirren on Saturday.

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Prevail and Aberdeen will rejoin Celtic at the summit on 34 points. That would leave a 26-point gap between them and Hibs. These two are supposed to be competing for third place and while one is overperforming, the other is drastically underachieving.

More than 2200 Aberdeen fans will be in attendance. Optimism is so high within the Red Army. It is the opposite at Hibs, with not one but two pieces of graffiti spotted outside Easter Road over the past two days. The message was the same in both of them: "Sack the board."

Grafitti reading 'Sack the Board' is written across from Easter Road.Grafitti reading 'Sack the Board' is written across from Easter Road.
Grafitti reading 'Sack the Board' is written across from Easter Road. | SNS Group

Hibs fans want blood, although not necessarily just Gray's. Dispensing with the man who gave them their greatest moment in the 2016 Scottish Cup would cut deep - although the scars of relegation would be more damaging. As always, Gray was respectful and articulate in his pre-match press conference but he had an air of despondency about him too. His players' mistakes are killing him - but he carries the can too.

Gray can at least take some solace for the way his team started at Dens Park, taking the lead and dominating the game before Obita's early red card. “That's not a team that's chucked it for the manager,” remarked Gray, “or not wanting to play, or not desperate to turn it around. So it's about staying as positive as you can, believing in what I'm doing, and sticking to what I'm doing, and working harder every single day to try and turn it around until someone tells me otherwise.

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"I really care about the football club. I've been here for a long time, I understand what it means to play for the club, to be here for as long as I have, and I'm desperate to turn it around.”

After Aberdeen comes Motherwell at Fir Park on Saturday. The Hibs board are understood to have identified the trilogy of matches incorporating Dundee and this week's encounters as the barometer of whether Gray will remain in charge going into December. The head coach has some “big calls” to make, including whether Josef Bursik starts in goal after his latest horror show against Dundee.

Gray was asked specifically about the Club Brugge loanee. “I've had big calls for a number of weeks,” replied Gray, “because there's been – not just Joe – there's been a lot of players making individual errors. Unfortunately for goalkeepers, when they make a mistake, they very often get punished, and when they do get punished, it leads to a goal. So he's going through a real difficult moment, and it's a situation that's not great for everybody involved."

Josef Bursik's Hibs position as No 1 is under threat after a series of errors.Josef Bursik's Hibs position as No 1 is under threat after a series of errors.
Josef Bursik's Hibs position as No 1 is under threat after a series of errors. | SNS Group

Jordan Smith, the deputy, is in line to start should Bursik be dropped. His last league match came back in March 2021 for Nottingham Forest in the English Championship, with a smattering of cup ties and friendlies drizzled in since then. The 29-year-old’s only Hibs appearance came in their 1-0 Premier Sports Cup defeat by Kelty Hearts.

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Should Hibs be victorious, though, they will move above another Hearts - their fierce city rivals - and condemn them to bottom spot. "Listen, tomorrow is a new game," defender Rocky Bushiri said, "a new opportunity to change things around. You play at home, you have to give people something back and do it for yourself as well. I think every club can go through a difficult period. Ours has taken a bit more time, we had new players in as well, but I'm sure we will do everything to turn this around. I think we can turn this around."

There will be no sympathy from Aberdeen. “That’s what good teams do when they have a knock-back, they respond from it,” said the Dons captain Graeme Shinnie of their defeat in Paisley. “We’ve done it after the heavy defeat to Celtic, and we have to do it again now. The majority of the season has been very good so far, so we need to remember that."

The same cannot be said of Hibs, whose need is greater to avoid a winter of discontent.

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