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00:00Hello and welcome to the Hibs Hub, my name is Ben Banks, joined again by John Green to
00:05look back on a fairly busy week around Easter Road with action on the park, pretty big news
00:12off it and the Dran Uni transfer wheels have started to turn ever so slightly with the first
00:18confirmation of a done deal coming into Easter Road and we'll move on to sort of our
00:24sort of transfer bulletin section where we actually have a signing to talk about
00:29this week in the form of Gambian international Alassane Mane from Odense, he signs on a three
00:36and a half year deal, came through the Barcelona academy, has gone on to make 200 career appearances
00:43in the Bulgarian, Polish, Danish top flights, a regular international for Gambia, David Gray
00:51said as a player he's very competitive, has a very, has a fantastic work ethic,
00:56has good technical ability on the ball, at 26 he's got good experience at senior level
01:01and playing in high light leagues and he adds extra strength and depth to the middle of our
01:05midfield, I hope he is certainly better than some of my pronunciation of basic English words there
01:11but regardless, this seems like you've spoke about on here about Hibs looking for maybe that
01:19no quite wow factor but you know the guy who's going to elevate an area of the team
01:25from, you've done a fair bit of writing on him this week, from what you've
01:28seen or read about him, what is it that gives you confidence that he can be that guy?
01:35Well everything's a little bit of a leap in the dark and like we said often enough,
01:40scouting is about taking player A from environment B and seeing if he'll work in environment C and
01:47trying to guess that to a degree. When we first revealed his name last week
01:54and we've tried to do this with Evening News which is don't just throw names around willy-nilly,
01:58make sure there's some sort of genuine interest there before we stick it you know up on our
02:05platform that we're not just throwing names in for the sake of there's a rumour here,
02:10it's a rumour in Italy, a rumour in Spain, so it's funny as soon as I heard
02:15through the grapevine, I heard oh looking for a guy in Denmark and I was like oh okay I wonder
02:19who that might be and I heard Odensa, looking for somebody at Odensa and I just I took a look
02:26to the Odensa squad and within 30 seconds I went it's him, it's just him, it's Alassane Amani,
02:33that's the guy there just like knowing having spoken to enough people at Hibs to know what
02:37they were looking for like that and then of course you check it out, check it out and get the old nod
02:42from yeah yeah that's one that they're looking at and it just you know we it's dangerous to
02:48apply logic to football but he just seems a logical choice because he is a central midfielder
02:54who creates a lot of chances, who makes interceptions, who gets around the park,
03:00who's 26 years old so not exactly a kid, not gonna struggle, who's played in three four different
03:06countries again so used to adapting to a different environment, we don't know it's going to be
03:15Scottish football, we kid ourselves on it's unique, it's not but it's there are some unique
03:20elements to it, the pace, every single player who's come here from any other league goes
03:24yeah man you don't get much time to think here do you, you don't get time to breathe,
03:28you need time to blink half the time and you know because the game is just played at that intensity
03:33all the time but he looks you know on video, on studying as much as I've seen of him,
03:42he loves a through ball, he loves a killer pass so he might be one of these guys although his
03:49stats are normally fairly good on this, he might be one of these guys who gives the ball away
03:53four or five times in a game because he's trying that killer ball. I think you look at him already
04:00and probably see him lining up nicely with you know playing balls inside fullbacks for
04:06Nicky Cadden on that side, playing balls through for Boyle, doing little bounce passes and giving
04:12goals and knocking the ball into dangerous areas, he's got a good record of assists,
04:18corners, free kicks, all that. I think he's an interesting signing, don't know as of yet at time
04:28of recording this how Joe Newell's doing with that groin injury so maybe he steps right in
04:34immediately and plays in place of Joe Newell, maybe he comes in and plays alongside Joe Newell
04:40on a slightly changed, more of a flat three. I think Fiantas has been number one on the starting
04:46list for a while there in the team sheet but does he get a rest at some point? He's giving himself
04:52options here, great and it's what he was looking for, a centre mid. I still think they'll be
04:58looking for one, two others but again I think Malcolm McKay said it yesterday, he said this
05:05window is all about quality not quantity and so that being said you can't even sign a guy, spend
05:16six figures for a guy with five months left on his contract which shows you wanted to get it
05:20done now. You can't bring him in and then go he's a squad player, he's clearly a starter,
05:26he clearly is. You don't spend money in a window when you've openly declared it's quality not
05:31quantity and Gray said we need X factor, we need this so there will be expectation on him as
05:38natural as it is for the club and coaches to maybe want to just temper expectation among the fans.
05:45We'll see how good he is, that's the joy of it isn't it, that's the joy of football,
05:50everyone gets excited about signing him and then we'll see and people will make a decision after
05:5420 minutes. No doubt, I think for this sort of what's listed as the 24-25 season, he's got
06:04seven assists in 17 games which seems fairly decent sledding by my count of it. Gornik Zabruzy
06:14in Poland is sort of where he's played most of his football and there was also a stint at a club
06:19in Bulgaria called Etar. There's not going to be names familiar to him but they're all
06:26teams who have been in and around a decent enough level that sort of gives you the hope that he's
06:34going to come in and it's not going to be, as you said, Scottish football isn't going to totally
06:38blinker him. OB got relegated last year, they're bouncing back top of that second tier. It's not
06:48been all sunshine and roses. I think if you look through the dive into the data and the stats,
06:53it's not just the assists, it's the expected assists, the progressive passes that he completes,
06:57the chances created for teammates. So he assists a very blunt tool, a blunt sort of measure of how,
07:05because you're relying on your striker putting it away and sometimes an assist is, you know,
07:10if I give you the ball 30 yards out, you swallow past six guys and stick it in the top bins,
07:14I get the assist. I've played a four yard path. So, but some of the other, if you go
07:20to dive into the data and just do the eyeball test, I've looked, I've watched a lot, a lot of
07:25footage of him on Wise Scout and anyone can look good on highlights but you look at the good and
07:30the bad and you think, well, you know, he's definitely got an eye for that gap and he's
07:36also got an eye because, maybe because that's the way he plays, for preventing the opposition doing
07:41that, for thinking, right, there's their playmaker on the ball, he's going to be trying to pick the
07:46ball here, I'm getting myself in the way, which, you know, as we've said repeatedly, the higher up
07:51the ladder you go with football, starting position becomes like 70-80% of it. This is why you're a
07:58qualified coach and I'm stuck hosting podcasts from various places. In terms of, so obviously
08:05that deal is done, would you, by the time we record this, I would imagine we'll probably
08:11record on the Tuesday next week after deadline days passed, would you expect more business
08:17sort of in and out of Hibs? I think so. I think we'll, I think certainly out because
08:23there will be, there's still loan deals to be done for younger players that are going to be
08:27moving out and maybe a couple of older players as well, guys just looking for game time.
08:35Gray will be wary of leaving himself short at any point, the last thing you want to do is say,
08:40hi guys, you can go, you go on loan and then there's two injuries and you're suddenly trying
08:45to play a right back in centre mid because you've not left yourself, you know, enough cover there.
08:51Ins, yes, yes, I just think, having said that, you look through the team and you go, what do
08:58they need? Where do they need? So they're not, there's not a glaring need for anything, you've
09:03got four stroke five central defenders, you've got Lewis Miller included in that with, once
09:11Epiteta is back, so you've got O'Hara, Iredell, Bashiri, Miller and then big Marvin coming back
09:17in. You've got two left wing backs, Nicky Cadden and Jordan Abita. You've got Chris Cadden, but
09:24Lewis Miller can play there as well. You've got, as we've talked about, up front now, you've got,
09:29assuming that everyone comes back fit, you've got Boyle, Juhan, Kujarevic, Bowie,
09:34Junior can play up there, you know, there's, so he's got a lot of bodies in there.
09:40But we talk a lot about that, creating that little buffer, that little buffer of quality of
09:46the player that's going to give you control over a game, not just even the extra goal,
09:51but a degree of control and a degree of keeping the opposition on the back foot constantly,
09:57so that the chances of them, even at 1-0, going and bagging a late equaliser or winning a soft
10:03penalty is kind of diminished and potentially negated if you're just in that degree of control
10:08of the game. So, but I think it would have to be anyone coming in now, because of the numbers,
10:14it would have to be a starter again, it would have to be someone that comes in and goes,
10:17I'll tell you what, this guy's, this guy's brilliant. Start him. He's now the answer to
10:23everything we need in that position. So it'll be interesting to see.