[0762]

Not the best performance for a good part of the first 45 mins when Hibs were cautious, casual, needlessly error-prone and almost gave themselves a "mountain to climb"!! That was a significant part of the game I observed with other Hibs fans in the North Stand!! And remember Maloney said in his pre-match comment Hibs were now well prepared and ready to go from the off. Not so!! Their vg performance after their first goal was indeed a huge surprise and nothing short of heroic, particularly after losing Newell and outplaying Hertz with ten men. However, the Newell dismissal, a player on an early yellow card for well over an hour, should've been managed better by Maloney and should never have happened - that was a huge lack of management nous, a fatal oversight not to take him off for his own good and a wise move for the benefit of the team!! I debated this issue with other Hibs fans about 15 mins before the red card was issued as "I've read this book" before v them and so have you Ritchie!!!!

Turns out there was a bust up in training just as i thought.  There is a lot of unhappy players.

Malky Mckay seems to be getting mentioned a lot..... He's done a great job at County but he well and truly blotted his copy book with that racist stuff.

I'm guessing the bust-up was relative to the system of playing that Maloney insisted on deploying with a lotta players not being comfortable with it esp during a period leading in to such important, season-defining matches - a case of no experiments please!! Also the racist stuff attached to Mackay happened years ago in 2013. It was admittedly unacceptable, but a huge element of regret and contrition followed on from that scandal as well as isolation from the game. On the footie side of things I can remember many Cardiff City fans saying at the time that they rated Mackay highly enough to be the greatest manager in their history - high praise indeed and something to take note of.