'Work is still ongoing' - Hibs sporting director Graeme Mathie on the club's recruitment plans and challenges

The Easter Road side are still devising shortlists as scouting moves online

Hibs are continuing to plan thoroughly for the transfer window, whenever it arrives.

Football clubs across the world have been put in a difficult position when it comes to preparing for next season due to the uncertainty presented by the coronavirus pandemic.

Within the SPFL, there is still no clear plan as to what happens next, whether the current season is played to a close and if next campaign will be altered. Add in the complexities of players’ contracts finishing in May plus clubs being unsure of budgets and it makes planning ahead problematic.

Hibs sporting director Graeme Mathie and manager Jack Ross are still keeping an eye on recruitment. Picture: Craig Williamson / SNS Group

Hibs’ sporting director Graeme Mathie explained to the Evening News that work is still ongoing with regards to the club’s plans for next season but it is unlikely movement on that front will happen anytime soon.

He said: “The biggest challenge is that this is a time where a lot of agents are phoning, asking ‘what are you needing? How much money have you got to spend?’.

“These are the questions you don’t because you don’t know when the window is going to be open, you don’t know when the season is finishing. There are so many unknowns.

“I think it is the case in recruitment all the time, you need to try and plan as best you can for as many eventualities as you can.

“We’ve got an idea of what we want the squad to look like for next year so we are working hard to fulfil those criteria, and that’s still what we’re doing, but the bit you can’t do is sign players on pre-contracts and make offers because you just don’t know when we’ll be playing again. Whether we’re playing this season with this season’s players, whether we’re playing next season, you just don’t know.”

He added: “You can do all the planning and all the work but I suppose you just can’t get to the point of making decisions and offers just quite yet.”

Video scouting

The club have had to adapt to the current situation with no games to send their scouts to analyse players. The focus has moved online. Potential signings are still being watched closely with shortlists drawn up for head coach Jack Ross and his assistant John Potter.

“We would have put more emphasis on getting guys out to cover games live so obviously we can’t do that now,” Mathie said. “Mike Meechan our senior scout has never been in front of his laptop as much in his life. He’s been doing a lot more video scouting and various things like that because we’ve just had to change the way we do things.

“Craig Scates, my colleague in recruitment, has really taken the lead on that. I’ve been pulled into a number of different things.

“He’s been pulling together the list of players we’ve been watching and highlighting previously. Getting a lot of clips together and links for some of their games and putting it around a number of the other scouts to watch and continue to put towards Jack and John Potter particularly.

“That work is still ongoing.”

‘Jumped ship at the right time’

As sporting director, Mathie has packed plenty in his new role since he was announced as George Craig’s replacement in October, stepping up from head of player identification and recruitment.

Since his appointment was confirmed he was involved in bringing in Jack Ross as Paul Heckingbottom’s replacement, organising the club’s warm-weather training camp in Spain, the January transfer window and behind the scenes work with chairman Ron Gordon prior to the coronavirus outbreak.

“I keep having a laugh with George Craig, I still phone him very regularly”, Mathie said. “I phoned him two Fridays ago and said ‘you must have seen this coming! Jumped ship at the right time and left me to deal with it’.

“It is an interesting period. I felt myself coming into this new role realising that everybody in football clubs all over the country works incredibly hard and all your time is taken up by doing the tasks you have got. I know that sounds really obvious but what you probably don’t afford yourself is a bit of time to take a step back and plan stuff.

“This has given us that opportunity so you are getting a whole influx of ideas from people about how they would like to make things better, what they might want to do in their own department.

“Calvin Charlton in the analysis department has been, for a long time now, doing a lot of the pre and post-match analysis work but clearly there are no games to analyse at the minute.

“These guys are taking on an additional project helping out in recruitment and using some of their skill-set to do that. And also planning how they might want to deliver analysis when things get back together.

“Especially coming into this break it’s been two and three-game weeks so it’s not been easy to plan and devote time to check these things up. But now they’ve got the time to do it so they are using it and I think it will be beneficial when we start again.”