'Not a red card' - Hibs boss defends debutant after baptism of fire in grim goalless draw

Hibs boss David Gray believes referee Ross Hardie was wrong to ruin Alasana Manneh’s debut by sending the Gambian midfielder off in a grim 0-0 draw against St Mirren in Paisley. And the Easter Road gaffer is frustrated that disciplinary rules won’t allow him to appeal against the second of two bookings shown to the former Odense player.

Lone January signing Manneh was booked a minute into his first appearance, having come on for Hyeokkyu Kwon with 20 to go in a game low on entertainment. And the former Barcelona prospect then picked up a second yellow for an innocuous looking aerial challenge on the same player, Killian Phillips, just 13 minutes later.

Gray, already without Dylan Levitt and Joe Newell because of injury, will now be missing Manneh for next weekend’s visit of Celtic.

“I don't think it's a red card,” he said. “Certainly, the second yellow. I don't think it's a second yellow.

“I can understand the first one because it's a foul. He's just came on the pitch; it's a bit of a mistimed tackle. It was only his first action in the game, and he'd been on the pitch ten seconds or something so that was disappointing.

“But the second one's certainly not a yellow card. I think he just competes, jumps for the ball, doesn't catch him by his elbow.

“You can't jump without using your arms, especially against someone who's six inches bigger than you, trying to get up to compete. I think a foul would have been just enough because he doesn't actually win the ball. So that would have been fine.

“The biggest frustration then comes from you can't overturn it. He's going to be suspended. So from that point of view, that's the frustration.

“And I'm disappointed for him because he's worked hard to get back up to speed and into the matchday squad. And obviously he's going to be suspended now. So not the debut he would want to remember his first start for Hibs.

“He is disappointed for that reason, as I've just said. That's not the way you want to be remembered for making your debut for your new club.

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“But as I say, I think he's been harshly done by today and I think we'll show him that. We'll make sure all the boys get around him and make sure we keep him up. It gives us an opportunity to really keep him working and make sure we get him up to speed as quickly as we can.”

Hanging on for a point saw Hibs extend their unbeaten run to a dozen games in all competitions, while they also held their opponents goalless for the third straight match, Gray insisting: “The clean sheet is a big positive because we pride ourselves on that. That's the biggest thing if you're keeping clean sheets. You can't lose games of football, so that's a good habit to get into.

“We were reliant on the goalkeeper, who makes a big save in the second half. And then I think if you look at Rocky Bushiri getting man of the match, his defensive display was excellent. I actually thought we defended the box reasonably well and we needed to be defensively good today because we were by no means good enough to really go and win the game.

“I thought it was a really poor game with no real quality within it. And when you're not at your best like we were today, nowhere near where we can be, we know that.

“We found a way to not lose the game and especially going down to 10 men as well, when the character would then be getting questioned and tested, it would be easy to fold. I thought we dealt with that really well and came away with a point, which is a point closer to where we need to be and certainly not a disaster on the road, especially coming to a place like this, which is a really difficult place to come.”