Exclusive: Why Hibs bid £1 million for prime target - but balked at blowing cash on over-priced alternatives

McCowan made his Celtic debut in yesterday’s Old Firm game. | SNS Group

Hibs sporting director Malky Mackay has revealed that the club bid £1 million for Luke McCowan before being gazumped by Celtic. And he insists it was simply impossible to find a value-for-money alternative to the Dundee captain once their offer was knocked back at the 11th hour.

Hibs made all of the early running in pursuit of McCowan, lodging a series of ever-increasing offers in the hope of landing the midfielder, only for Celtic to swoop in just before Friday night’s transfer deadline. Addressing fan complaints that Hibs didn’t appear to have a ready-made second option on standby, just in case, Mackay explained the logic behind the lack of a ‘back-up’ signing.

“The Luke McCowan one was very particular signing,” he explained, adding: “It was one who clearly is one of the best midfielders outside of the Old Firm, in Scotland.

“And data backs that up. Forget the naked eye. His numbers over the last two years show how productive he’s been, so he’s a very specific player.

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“There are not a lot of them around. Certainly in the timescale we were looking at. To go and find another version of Luke McCowan, that’s not easy.

“Now, we had an owner absolutely willing to back that signing. Let me be really clear about that.

“I’ll tell you that he wanted to back it to the tune of a million pounds. The man was prepared to back that. I don’t mind saying that our owner was going to spend that.

“Obviously once Celtic come in, you are not going to get that player. There’s not a lot we can do about that.

“But our conversations with Dundee were all conducted in good faith. And our owner was really prepared to back the football club by going to get a very specific player.

“It went right down to the wire, it really did. It was an hour from deadline. It’s not as if we knew for definite that Celtic were going to come in for him – it went down to 10 o’clock on the night, when we were told that we’d been outbid.

“It wasn’t a case of us saying: ‘OK, what do we do with the million pounds?’ Because I’m not in the business of just spending the owner’s money for the sake of it. It’s got to be specifics – and we have to make sure we don’t make mistakes with finances and investment, meaning we repent at our leisure.

“We could have jumped onto another target, spent the money and then ended up thinking: ‘Actually, this guy isn’t any better than what we have in the building.’ That’s a long and convoluted way of saying that just because the money is there, that doesn’t mean the opportunity is there.”

Midfielders of McCowan’s type and quality are rare in the Scottish market, which is why Celtic felt compelled to take a minor gamble. And dipping into the English market in search of someone capable of coping with the frenetic pace and physicality of the Scottish Premiership also presents problems, according to Mackay.

He said: “I mean, if you look at the English market just now, it’s massively over-inflated. There is very little value for money there. Every club is finding that out.

“After Brexit, rules concerning players from abroad vastly changed in England. With a smaller pool of players to look at, the lower leagues are becoming vastly over-inflated in terms of cost versus value.

“So for me to go and spend a million pounds with a club down in England, would I have got the same value as Luke McCowan? Absolutely not.

“So it was a very specific signing. All of our other business was being done to build a spine of the team, bringing in good professionals and good leaders, good characters.”

Assessing a summer window where Hibs made 11 new signings, Mackay stressed the importance of taking a measured approach, saying: “It’s important not to have a knee jerk reaction when bringing a player in. For example, an agent calls you and says: ‘If you don’t make this decision tonight, there’s a good chance he’ll sign for club X tomorrow …’

“There are times when you say that’s fine, if he goes, he goes. And invariably they come back to you a week later to say: ‘By the way, that guy is still available.’

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“Experience of having done this so many times teaches me that you work at the pace that gives you the best checks and balances for your own club.

“I definitely didn’t want to be bringing players in, then after a short of period of time we’re wondering why we paid THAT money for THAT player. We have to make sure that we negate the risk, as much as possible, of a player not working.

“Like everything, the work we did could be better, because you always aim for perfection. But, having done this for a number of years now, as a manager or sporting director in the summer window, the list on Day 1 never resembles the list of deals done on Day 90 or so. You need to be mindful of that.

“Players come and go on the radar. Some players want their futures dealt with quickly, others want to wait out the summer and see if there are other clubs interested.

“And there is always a bigger club than you. Always, no matter where you are.”