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00:00Hello and welcome to the Hibs Hub, my name is Ben Banks, back to talk about another Hibs
00:10victory, getting used to saying that now after the first half of the season where we went
00:14searching for that sentence at the start of this podcast, but nevertheless just the one
00:19defeating ten now for David Grayside, a very comfortable 3-1 win over Muddle, Isle of Wood
00:25on Saturday and we'll talk about that. We'll have a look at the latest sort of trans-ferry
00:31news, although we're going to have to really dig this out because there really hasn't been
00:35a lot, I mean I think the most contract news we've had this week is Hibs extending their
00:40partnership with LNER, I think that's probably as good as we've got. There has been a couple
00:48of wee loan things, Murray Aitken, Ruben McAllister and Rory Whittaker have all returned to the
00:53club, that was officially confirmed by the club before the game. A couple of loan extensions,
00:59Jacob McIntyre will remain with Kelly Harts until the end of the season, Noan Kenna has
01:05continued to play pretty regularly since going up to Ross County, there's an article on the
01:10website that weighs some quotes from him on his first six months at Hibs and Owen Calder
01:17has agreed to remain at Berwick Rangers until the end of the season. Not really been any
01:23concrete talk, we did mention Dylan Levitt and the Wrexham stuff at the start of the
01:27but there's nothing in that, that's just pure, that's not even reporting talk, that's just
01:33Hibs forum chat. Yeah, I got a message from a guy who covers Wrexham during the week saying
01:39that this doesn't make sense to me, I don't think they're looking for a midfielder, what
01:44about you? And I said well, I don't know, if there was money involved I'm sure Hibs
01:49would listen, they're in that situation, but he certainly didn't think that a midfielder
01:57was anywhere near their priorities and he thought just people were putting, as you say,
02:00two and two together and getting whatever the Welsh word is for 369. Honours and honours are syllables.
02:11Honours are syllables, I can't ask for a cappuccino in Welsh.
02:17Ready on frothy coffee?
02:20Wow, there we go.
02:22Frothy coffee is cappuccino.
02:24I'll go into my Daz Patter book and see where we land up in that. Probably the other thing
02:32that people have maybe asked is, there's obviously this good run of form, football is short term,
02:38we have spoken in this podcast before about, you know, the summer is the time for the reset
02:44button, with this run of form and if Hibs manage to maintain it to any sort of level,
02:49do you think that will change the thinking when it comes to the several players that
02:55are out of contract, maybe not so much the guys who are out the picture, but certainly
03:00some of the guys who are maybe starting to come into it a wee bit more, do you think
03:03this run will change things on that front?
03:06Yeah, quite possibly, I think there are guys playing for their futures and that always
03:12sounds kind of dramatic, but to be fair, it's the truth. Even if you've got a three-year
03:17contract, players get used to being judged from about nine years old and they're playing
03:23for their futures effectively. It's a terrible part of youth football. Say maybe about 16
03:28anyway, they start playing for their contracts and they're playing for their place in the
03:32youth and the development squad and whatever it is. So there are guys who can certainly
03:38play themselves into it, into new contracts, into extensions. There's also opportunities
03:48for some guys out of contract to be talking to other clubs at the moment and Hibs seem
03:53to be taking quite a mature stance on that one. I'm old enough to remember when the Bosman
03:58ruling came in and the pre-contracts were the first thing and guys had six months left
04:04on their contracts and managers were like, I'm not playing him. I'm just not playing
04:09him. He's not going to be focused because he's thinking about his next move. There were
04:13guys getting benched for the best part of the second half of the season because he hadn't
04:17signed the new contract and he was going to leave in the summer as a free agent. And gradually
04:22people just grew up about it and said, well, look, I might leave as a free agent somewhere.
04:27I might sign here. I'm going to give you my 100% and managers know the ones that they
04:32can trust. And even if somebody signs a pre-contract to go and play somewhere else, I think the
04:40players understand themselves from their own pride professionalism, their own personal
04:45brand has to be what I can't even be seen to be even downing tools to a tenth of a degree.
04:53I've got to keep giving my absolutely everything because that's what I do and that's how I've
04:58got this move or new contract or whatever it is.
05:02And probably the final thing on the striker departments, maybe looked a bit bad in the
05:07last couple of weeks. You've had Dwight Gale, who is openly admitted that body isn't working
05:11the same, wingers playing up front. But I think Eli Yuan had a small setback, but not
05:18miles away from coming back. As you said, Kieran Bowie and Kukerevic, we could see them
05:22very shortly. When you then add those two in, do you think there'll be a tendency to
05:28try and go and get another striker? Do you think with those three options, if you can
05:31manage to get them a level of fit that you can kind of go, right, we've got three fairly
05:36decent options who have operated at a high level?
05:39I think you can't ignore Martin Boyle and how he's playing at centre forward as well.
05:44And particularly with this 3-4-1-2 formation, there isn't room for a winger as it works
05:53for wing back. So that would be Caden or Miller on one side and the other Caden, Nicky won't
05:59like being called that, the other Caden or Ibita on the other side. So you've got two
06:03for that. So I think you probably put Boyle, Bowie, Gale, Kukerevic, Yuan as five. So five
06:12for two places. It wouldn't be a priority, but everything I understand and everything
06:19I've spoken to people at Hibbs, it's not necessarily about the position they're looking
06:23for. They're looking for that player that they shouldn't be able to get. The guy who
06:29is like Malida last year, who just made football look easy because he was several levels above
06:38the competition he was facing. So if they can get that kind of quality, I think they
06:43would take it anywhere. If that was a striker, if that was a centre half, if that was a midfielder,
06:48you've got all these great wing backs, but if it was a wing back, but you thought this
06:52is the next Andy Robertson or the next Calvin Ramsey from Liverpool, you would just take
07:01him because he'd improve your team massively. I think mostly they'd be looking just for
07:08the quality. I think if you look through the squad at the moment, you're probably a little
07:11bit light in centre mid. Everyone would acknowledge that just because Saquon hasn't really kept
07:18on and Nathan Moriah Welsh, for whatever reason, isn't getting in there. So if you maybe say
07:25if you're centre mid, you've only got Newell, Grantis, Leavitt, that's three for two. You
07:31probably want another one in there anyway. And if you listen, if Garvin Stewart and his
07:37Black Knight contacts group from the database comes up with, we've got a guy in here who's
07:43going to be, trust me, he's got the same profile as Sergio Busquets. He's going to be outstanding
07:49in centre mid. They'd say, okay, we'll take a look at him. Put it that way.