As bad looks go, the whole, sorry mess that has unfolded off the field at Hibernian over the past couple of weeks is right up there. A £7.2million loss slipped out on the day of a big televised cup game on Friday – with a warning that next year’s accounts aren’t going to be a whole lot better.
The CEO on the hook for those figures already long gone – last seen rolling around in a Porsche with a former football operations director who left amid allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards a young male player aged over 18.
Yes, there are some lovely new bars and restaurants inside Easter Road these days. Very swish.
However, they are beginning to look like places in which their punters will only be drowning their sorrows for as long as owner Ian Gordon is allowed to carry on influencing the club’s direction of travel.
For a long time now, it has been easy to come to the conclusion that the 34-year-old American – who took on the role of running the old place following the passing of his father Ron in February 2023 – doesn’t have a terribly firm grip on what he’s doing.
It became even easier back in September when he agreed to his first big telly interview and more or less confirmed it.
Hibernian fans look set to continue drowning their sorrows under their owner Ian Gordon
Former chief executive Ben Kensell, right, oversaw a £7.2million loss despite bold promises
Horrific recruitment continues to be the millstone dragging Hibs down. And his pawmarks are all over it.
From October 2021 to May 2023, he was head of the department. In that grand emergence from the shadows on Sky Sports, he pretty much admitted he should never have been in the job in the first place.
Since the Gordons took over in 2019, Hibs have signed more than 80 players. They’re now on their fourth manager since sacking Jack Ross the week before the team’s appearance in the 2021 League Cup final – another decision recognised as a mistake – and have been eighth in a 12-team league in two of three seasons.
In binning the likes of Shaun Maloney and Nick Montgomery before they had even completed a full season, Gordon conceded the club’s decision-makers found themselves in a cycle of not really having the confidence to back their own calls.
Sure, there are signs things are changing. Bill Foley’s Black Knight Group, tired of being sidelined since buying a 25 per cent share for £6m a year ago, have clearly started to flex their muscles a little more.
Bournemouth’s former head of recruitment analysis Garvan Stewart was parachuted in at the end of last year to take over the hiring and firing at Easter Road. It is telling that only one new player arrived in January in Alasana Manneh.
Gordon and the now-departed CEO Ben Kensell flew to Las Vegas in November for clear-the-air talks with Foley and his Black Knight Football Club lieutenants Ryan Caswell and Tim Bezbatchenko. Be sure that their input is having a greater say in things now.
Yet, concerns must remain. That Gordon and his mother Kit have committed to underwriting losses only buys so much goodwill. Having constant shortfalls covered by owners and directors has to bring a day of reckoning at some point.
Sacking the likes of Shaun Maloney and Nick Montgomery before completing full seasons in charge showed the club’s decision makers have not had the confidence to back their own calls
Just look at Rangers, who no longer have enough money, according to manager Philippe Clement, to get Lyall Cameron out of Dundee before the end of his contract. That’s where years and years of having to pony up to compensate for atrocious recruitment, endless losses and useless management of assets gets you.
In Hibs’ case, there is a real issue in terms of transparency between Gordon and the club’s support as well. When he became head of recruitment, it was never formally announced. That’s yet another thing he admitted was a mistake during that interview with Sky Sports.
Quite how you explain away the absolute balderdash Kensell fed to shareholders and supporters 12 months ago when announcing a £3.9m loss in the previous set of financial figures is something else altogether.
‘The accounts for next year are a marked improvement – much, much better on the numbers of this year’s accounts,’ he stated with a straight face back then.
Kensell also promised that a wages-to-turnover ratio of 81 per cent would be ‘significantly lower’ this year. In the accounts released on Friday, it is 78 per cent. It not hard to see why he disappeared out the door before being left to wipe egg off his chin.
It is probably best not to go into the background to ex-football operations bloke Derek White – pictured having coffee and riding around with Kensell in that big fancy car last month – resigning in November. However, it is worth noting that these were people assigned to senior management positions under Gordon’s reign.
Had current manager David Gray, appointed, by all accounts, against Black Knight’s wishes, not turned round an abominable start to the season and gone on a run of 11 games unbeaten, there would be surely be mutiny around Easter Road.
It’s all very well telling the public that new people are in place who know what they are doing, that new structures exist, that lessons have been learned from the past and that money is there to make up for errors and prevent significant debt being accumulated.
How do you trust that process if the same guy responsible for so much of the disasters of recent seasons remains at the top of the tree – with sporting director Malky Mackay making it clear to all and sundry in an interview last year that ‘Ian Gordon should be involved in the fabric of this football club’?
What Foley makes of it all would be fascinating to know. What his longer-term intentions are for Hibs are a matter of interest too.
Rocky Bushiri scored the winning goal in Hibernian’s Scottish Cup tie at Ayr on Friday
Bournemouth owner Bill Foley has a 25 per cent stake in Hibs and may take greater interest
Black Knight hold 100 per cent of Bournemouth. According to an interview Foley gave to Bloomberg in December, plans are in place to own French side Lorient lock, stock and barrel too following the initial purchase of 40 per cent.
Elsewhere in the stable, Auckland City are now up and running and top of Australia’s A-League and a verbal agreement reportedly exists to buy a 70 per cent shareholding in Portuguese side Moreirense.
Lorient had to be issued ultimatums by Foley after being relegated from Ligue 1 last term and are currently top of the second tier. The 80-year-old is understood to have taken a similar approach with Hibs with reports stating that he plans to focus more intently on his football operation this year.
‘Once I get involved in something,’ he stated, ‘I’m all-in.’
Whether he wants to go properly all-in at Hibs and take over is unclear. Whether Hibs fans would want that to happen has to be properly ascertained as well.
But it is hard to be confident about the future of the Leith outfit with Gordon remaining at the head of the pyramid given the fact the most notable element of his time at Easter Road has been the admission of foul-up after foul-up after foul-up.
He is expected to speak at the shareholder AGM on February 25 and he’d better have something to offer because, at the moment, it is all too easy to see where the element of the fanbase who want him to sell up and ship out are coming from.
Farewell from fickle Duk has left me queasy
Just a week or so after his tears on the park at Motherwell after scoring on his return for Celtic, Portuguese winger Jota has already been shunted out of the running for the 2025 Pass The Sickbag award.
In the wake of his deadline night move to Spanish outfit Leganes, a message from former Aberdeen striker Duk Lopes popped up on social media, addressed to supporters of the Pittodrie club.
Oh, my gosh, it should almost have appeared in a Mills and Boon novel. ‘Thank you from the bottom of my heart’, ‘incredibly grateful’, ‘a beautiful chapter in my life’, ‘the love you gave me has always been mutual’, yadda, yadda.
Duk Lopes expressed his gratitude to Aberdeen, despite failing to report to pre-season training
It ended with the sign-off ‘Once a Don, always a Don’ with a great, big, red heart.
Haud the bus here. Is this the same bloke who failed to report for pre-season training back in July and ended up having to issue a public apology when he finally reappeared in September?
There was a fair case to be made for refusing to let Duk back through the door at Pittodrie at that point, but management clearly felt there was worth in returning him to the fold with the intention of getting some kind of return on their investment.
If the Dons really got £600,000 for this geezer from Leganes, they got out of jail.
Celtic should have tooled up for Bayern tie
Plenty has been said since deadline day about Celtic’s failure to sign a replacement for Kyogo Furuhashi – when they knew for quite some time that the Japanese international was itching to do a runner.
Manager Brendan Rodgers, to his credit, hasn’t tried to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes either. He wanted a new striker. He didn’t get one.
The fact it isn’t ‘terminado’ time suggests that the years do, indeed, mellow the man or that he simply knows what he is dealing with now.
For a long time, Celtic were just happy with getting to the Champions League group stages and banking the money. There appeared no real commitment to – or evident care about – going any further.
Brendan Rodgers has been left without a replacement for departed striker Kyogo Furuhashi
It felt like it might be different this season. Reaching the knockout play-off round has been everything asked of Rodgers, but wouldn’t it have been good to have a proper go at making the last 16?
No one is saying Celtic have any right to even give Bayern Munich a game. But it would send the right kind of message to everyone, including the manager, to tool up and try.
It would show that Europe is a serious, serious ambition against a domestic backdrop of failing rivals and easy domination.
Sadly, old habits die hard, right enough.
