Exclusive - Hibs outline recruitment principles behind Black Knight tie-in

Hibs gaffer wants star quality signings like Emi Marcondes (centre) and Myziane Maolida (right). | SNS Group

Five months on from the investment being rubber stamped, and well into a window that has seen Hibs work towards a desperately needed squad overhaul via a series of minor manoeuvres, supporters with a keen eye on the markets are entitled to ask some obvious questions. Like when, exactly, will the tie-in with billionaire Bournemouth owner Bill Foley begin to pay serious on-field dividends? And how many potential match winners might be borrowed/temporarily reassigned from other clubs in the Black Knight stable?

New Hibs sporting director Malky Mackay is in regular communication with Bournemouth counterpart Simon Francis, himself newly appointed to the top job after Liverpool swooped for technical director Richard Hughes. David Gray, the four-time interim head coach appointed manager during the brief close season, has spoken about augmenting the current squad – once a lot of the deadwood has been shifted – by quality additions on a par with, for instance, January loan signings Myziane Maolida and Emi Marcondes (who was a Bournemouth player).

The ambition is obvious. Hibs intend to carry out their own recruitment – Josef Bursik, Warren O’Hora and Marvin Ekpiteta so far – to build solid foundations. Before turning to Foley’s network for, they hope, a couple of marquee additions … potentially worth much more than the £6 million buy-in cleared by shareholders back in February.

Mackay insists any co-operation with Bournemouth will be done on the basis of what Hibs need, saying: “We’re certainly going to try, put it that way. Myself and Simon Francis is the communication angle, he’s new in his job but has been at the club; he’s now the sporting director now that Richard Hughes has gone. He’s going to have his own mindset on their needs in the new role.

“But we will have an ability to have conversations. I’m certainly going to go down, spend a bit of time down there. There are a lot of facets of sports science, the academy, best practices we can share.

“Obviously recruitment is the one area everyone wants to focus on. But that’s got to be based on a player, a very specific player who is going to come and make a difference to our team.

“So as we saw last year, it’s got to be on an individual basis. We can’t just go for four players a year. There’s no point if there is only one player who can hit the ground running in the Scottish Premiership. There’s no point in the other three. Or if there are none able to do that.

“But certainly we hope to be able to lean on each other in recruitment if that’s down to analysis or finding out about a player. That’s certainly how I see it working, communicating regularly, honestly and openly with a partner.” Mackay’s new role involves overseeing every aspect of the football department. Including keeping a close eye on an academy system with a decent record of producing first-team stars.

“There’s a balance to that,” said the former SFA technical director. “What we’ve got to do is make sure the Hibs Academy flourishes – and that it sees a pathway.

“This is a very fraught subject in Scottish football, the pathway between youth football and playing senior football in the SPFL. There is no one size fits all solution. That’s why there has been an SPFL working party on it for the last number of years, because every club is different in terms of what suits them.

“Some have a development team. Some have a colts team. Some want reserves. Some rely on loans.

“What I want is to ensure that the Hibs Academy flourishes to the point where players actively want to come here – because they see a pathway to our first team. We must have an ability to say to David: ‘This player has come through the youth team, the development squad – and he’s ready for you.’

“His eyes will be on the first team. His coaches will have an eye on the development team and youth team because part of their job is to be the link between academy and first team, see who is pushing, who is chapping at the door.

“And are they ready? If they’re not ready and we put them in just to get a youth player in the team, they’ll get eaten alive. Sometimes that damages their career fundamentally, and it takes ages for that boy to come back somewhere else.

“I want to have a conveyor belt of players coming through to play for the first team. And then they become Lewis Stevensons. Or they become a player like Josh Doig or Ryan Porteous and get sold to one of the top five countries in Europe. That helps our club massively – and the club loves that.”