Aim Here

Celtic shortly after that, and anyways, St Johnstone are the team that Hibs simply can't beat these days.

If Stubbs would just be here till the end of the season, as per your other post, that 'head start' is not a good thing, since he'd just be a stopgap - and then whoever we get in the summer won't have the advantage of having worked with the team, won't be used to how they operate, and will be making summer transfer signings cold - and it was misguided summer signings that screwed us up this season. I'd rather give the permanent guy the rest of this season to get caught up.

It's a 3.5 year deal, and if the stories are true about Appleton's contract negotiations, he'll only get 4 months compo after a firing. I suppose a short-term appointment might be more acceptable, but hiring a short term manager would probably be a bad move in general. Why spend a fortnight hiring one and then another fortnight in summer, when you can hire a permanent manager in much the same length of time?

I think you've an overly simplistic view of the support's opinions. Stubbs would be a far more divisive choice than you seem to think.

I'm bummed about this news, if true. If nothing else, Appleton was going to be a goldmine of Conan The Hibernian memes and instead we'll have to rely on actual footballing results for our entertainment, and that's a big ask.

So was Hearts' manager Craig Levein the first choice pick of, err, Hearts Director of Football Craig Levein, or did he have to reject a bunch of better candidates first? I'm not sure which recruitment process is more likely to inspire confidence. In other news, looks like Darnell's getting a retroactive clobbering by the match officials and their compliance overlords who seemingly are unable to keep their decisions constant from one *hour* to the next. So it goes.

Petrie-fy, vb, to place in a state of fear or suspense at the outcome of pending decisions of the Hibernian Football Club board of management...

What do you want us to do? Lennon was already underperforming when the mutually-consented parting-of-the-ways happened - if he hadn't made the top 6 by the split, he'd probably have been out on his arse anyways. And we don't know what went on that led to him leaving - it wouldn't have been entirely out of character for him to to have said or done something unacceptable. Outside of a handful of gung-ho mini-Celtic roasters (like the guy who brought his Celtic-supporting mate into the away end at Parkhead the other day to sing 'One Neil Lennon'), there's not that much call for a 'sack the board' campaign on behalf of a manager whose footballing mistakes (whatever they were) led to a pretty disappointing season.

We're not getting Stubbs. We're getting either someone with a name from a Two Ronnies sketch about comedy Yorkshiremen, or a sentient bicep with a head. Can't wait.

To be fair, the last two random lower league English failures handpicked by Leeanne were Alan Stubbs and Neil Lennon, and they both seemed to do okay.

Just browsing the Oxford United fan forums, they seem awfully nostalgic for the days when Appleton was in charge. Searching for the name pops up stuff like: "It’s bewildering that it’s taken so little time to go from being stable and fun to watch under Appleton to the shambles from top to bottom that’s before us now." "He joined an up and coming squad managed by Appleton that was playing (and winning) good football" "I disagree. This team under Appleton would be significantly better." " ... should we lose on Saturday - relieve Robinson of his duties and get Michael Appleton in. " None of these is atypical. Even the negatives are basically stuff like: "Liam Sercombe to Pompey? think that was one of the few things Appleton got wrong letting him go." With that kind of testimonial, I'm sold. Bring us the musclemonster, Leeann.

Maybe that's why Aston Villa have John McGinn and Celtic don't.

From the looks of things, when that Mike Appleton has cause to fling a chair at you, the matter is settled, once and for all.

We didn't expect him to get a game ahead of anybody at all. This was just some warm body to throw on the field in the unlikely event we ran out of defenders. Spending money on someone who could actually kick a ball would have been the dumb move. We could spend that cash on something useful, instead.

Which is funnier - taking on the cheapest donkey you could find as injury cover for Lewis Stevenson, who had a reputation for never missing a match - or using said donkey as a first-choice starting left-back for a year?

That's not the only metric that counts. Look at Faycal Rherras - he covered an essential gap last January, after Motherwell had hoofed all our other defenders off the pitch, and he took the opportunity to run down the clock when he was on the ball, while we were winning. I mean, he didn't do it intentionally - it really *did* take him about 4 minutes to drag the ball from the penalty area to the halfway line, but it's all good. We signed him on a free, he makes about three appearances on the subs bench, slags off his old team Heart of Midlothian on twitter (despite them deeming him worthy of a place in the starting lineup a season or so back) and we let him go again. Totally worth it! And Scott Bain was possibly the best signing we made last January, and he played precisely zero minutes of football for Hibs. Not all football players are paid to play football!

Nah. I'm not worried about Allan, though, since Gauld looks like he'll be playing all the shroo balls that Scotty would have played, and a few more besides. We're down our two best central defenders (our two best players for the first half of the season, even) in exchange for some kid from Leicester's youth team, which I reckon might hurt us some.

So are there any managers out there who are experienced with the 2-6-2 formation?

Transfer news at last: Jamie Maclaren is out the door. This had better mean that we have at least one striker coming in, or there'll be a strong exchange of views between the club and the fans...

He was quoted in the press saying he was going to be in Edinburgh yesterday/today for a bunch of things entirely unrelated to any Hibs job, so he's already staved off those rumours.

The entire history of Yugoslavia - from it's creation as a kingdom, it's invasion and occupation, liberation, reformation as a Communist Republic and then elections, wars of secession and dissolution - all happened since Dundee won the Scottish Cup.

Bringing Efe back from his free agent sabbatical would be a good start to the day. https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/sport/football/hibs/hibs-offer-efe-ambrose-new-deal-amid-interest-from-bolton-1-4865335

The fiction is 'mutual consent'. Where both parties agree that it's not working out and they go their separate ways in a manner that saves as much face/money as possible. Hibs don't have much to gain from trashing the rest of Lenny's career with a sacking or a forced resignation, and they paid Lenny enough that he can make firing him expensive. Much as we'd all like acrimonious disputes and salacious gossip, that may have to wait for until they write and publish the upcoming ghostwritten autobiography, Neil Lennon - The Ginger Prince, and of course Kamberi - Volume 2: The Buckfast Years...

Exactly. A resignation or sacking would be bad for Lenny's career so he gets lawyers on the case to avoid it. A big tribunal case would be expensive and annoying for Hibs, and even if they win, they gain bugger all and lose in legal fees, so the decide the neatest way is to settle in a let's-save-face settlement that costs them less than whatever it would cost to actually sack Lenny. Both parties agree to say nice things about each other in the statement (and there's a bunch of nice things that they can say, to be fair), a bag of money changes hands, the size of which depends on how bad Lenny's infraction is, and what his contract would have said, and everyone goes on with their lives.