Revealed - Hibs team-mate's wise words for Youan as star man struggled with fan criticism
French attacker earns ovation with stand-out performance
It feels like a lifetime ago now. But it was only early November when Elie Youan was being half dragged, half escorted off the pitch at Easter Road by team-mate Jordan Obita, with security staff keeping a close eye on the French attacker following angry confrontations with home fans.
Watching Youan enjoy the applause of virtually every Hibs supporter in attendance at the same venue yesterday, the forward revelling in his role as hero in a 3-1 win over Ross County, Obita could only smile at how things had turned around for a player subjected to some truly awful abuse on social media in a season of upheaval, injury and disappointment. It felt like a turning point, hopefully, for a player of undoubted talent.
Experienced defender Obita, asked what he’d said to Youan during those difficult scenes following an ugly 2-1 home defeat to St Mirren, revealed: “I was just saying to him that unfortunately it's part of the game. You're going to get criticism; you've just got to take it and show people what you're good at.
“Unfortunately, as a creative player, that's what you have to deal with. Sometimes it comes off, sometimes it doesn't. When it does come off, he's just got to believe in himself to keep doing it every single week.
“Everyone knows Elie's quality, he's a top player, especially when he's on top of his game. He's very hard to play against, we see it in training all the time. Not just him, everybody needs to do it on the pitch in a game day.
“Obviously on social media, a lot of stuff has been said negatively about Elie, but he's a very strong-minded person and he always believes in himself. When he does show that confidence, he's an unbelievable player.”
Hibs boss David Gray has been emphasising the need for his team’s character to carry them through games when talent isn’t quite enough. His public messaging has, apparently, been consistent with internal communications.
“Yes, he has challenged us,” said Obita, the defender – a second-half substitute for Jack Iredale yesterday – adding: “Look at our squad, it's quality, but I believe this season we've not shown it enough. Now it's the right time to try and show our quality because we've got so much in the changing room, we just need to get it on the table.
“This gives us massive confidence, you know, because obviously we didn't start well, the game wasn't pretty, but to get the three points will give us massive encouragement going forward. In his meeting before the game, he told us if we won, we could go to eighth, and we knew it was going to be difficult.
“Ross County are not a pretty team, they're quite a solid, hard to break down team, and quite a scrappy team to play against. So obviously the game wasn't great to watch, but the main thing was to get the three points and give us confidence going into Aberdeen next week.”
Obita described the psychological effect of leaping up to eighth place – even temporarily – in the table in blunt terms, saying: “Massive, you know. When we played against Aberdeen at home, that gave us probably the most courage to believe in ourselves, because we easily could have just gone back in our shell and been negative. But no, ever since that game there, we've started to believe more in ourselves and the results have been more positive.
“After every game, on Monday or Tuesday whenever we're back in, he always does a video analysis and shows us what we could have done better, what we've done well. At the moment, we can see that we've been more solid, especially later on in the game.
“He’s shown us how we’re getting better at stopping silly goals and that's probably been a key thing. We can see we’re improving in stopping conceding goals late on – and obviously in scoring goals at the other end now.”
The challenge now is to make yesterday’s win anything but another one-off, Obita admitting: “We had a great run-up heading into Celtic. I thought we had started probably at the wrong time – and the result at Celtic Park probably didn’t reflect our performance.
“Now that we’ve got another positive result against Ross County, we just need to make sure that next time we actually play a bit better than we did in this one. Because we didn't start the game really well. At the end of the day, we got the result.
“At this time of year, sometimes it's not about how you play, it's about the result. Just win. That's what everyone want, you know, just get the win. Especially when you've got those games coming up.
“Obviously, it's getting really tight now, especially around Christmas time. At the end of the day, we just want to get the three points to climb that table.”