'You practically come out of the womb and you're told Celtic and Rangers are amazing': Mindset is biggest issue, says Hibs boss Lee Johnson

Sunday was a sombre day for Hibs. Less than 24 hours after being beaten 6-1 by Celtic in the league, their day off was cancelled and they were at their East Mains training base, holding a “full-stop meeting”.

Manager Lee Johnson during an open training session at Easter Road.

The raison d’etre of such a rendez-vous is to draw a line under such a bad performance and move on. Hibs have a big match on Friday, when they welcome St Johnstone to a near sold-out Easter Road. There’s the little issue of VAR making its debut too. Not much time for dwelling on the past, although it was hard not to at least mention the weekend walloping at Hibs’ press day on Tuesday.

Their manager, Lee Johnson, believes that some of his players have a mental block when it comes to playing Celtic or Rangers, implying that the mindset of many Scots when they come up against the Old Firm is that they are beaten before a ball is kicked. He has spoken to psychologists to try and get the bottom of it.

"It was a negative meeting in terms of my delivery,” said Johnson. “I'm just not willing to accept the fact that we can't get closer to those teams. Now I look back on it, I think we were beaten before we went into the game. It was an absolute shock to me. I thought about it, I spoke to a couple of psychologists, and I realised that these guys have probably been beaten year-on-year since they were eight years old by these teams. You practically come out of the womb and you're told Celtic and Rangers are amazing. Someone told me Motherwell haven't beaten Rangers in the league in 20 years or something like that. Crazy. Then I thought about the players who have been in Scotland for a long time and this brainwashing. A couple of actions happened in the first ten minutes or so and that was it. It was as if they collectively said, 'Oh right, here we go. They're playing well today and we're not'.”

How do you change that, Johnson was asked, a footballer who spent most of his career in England but did have spells north of the border with Hearts and Kilmarnock. “The big picture is implementing a psychological programme,” he reasoned. “Let's not take away from Celtic, they're a fantastic team, but we're not 6-1 away from Celtic. On Saturday we were, and it could have been ten. I was angry after the game because I felt we let everyone down, but I'm now very, very curious about it.

"To give you an example, I think we can start this psychological programme with our young pups, like 16 all the way through. We whitewashed Rangers in the academy over the weekend. That's a good start. Our under-18s won the league last year. They're probably not affected in the same way, and that's inevitably what you want. You want to phase out that negative psychology, and phase in that positive belief. Could we go to Celtic Park in three years time with three midfielders who are 16 now – 19 then – in our team, with a completely different fear factor? I hated it. I couldn't stand it.”

Johnson did a lot of soul-searching himself. “Oh yeah, loads,” he added. “The first person you look at is yourself. You look at the team selection, the way you set the press, the turnaround – did I create enough time to study given the quick turnaround from midweek?”