Mickey Weir: What the incoming new director of football at Hibs needs to do first

Yesterday evening saw the news Hibs are looking to hire a director of football as they restructure the club behind the scenes.

It’s a development which all Hibs fans should welcome. Things haven’t been good enough on the park for a sustained period of time now and instead of constantly recycling through managers a change at the top needed to be made.

The people in charge in the club have had a look at the strategies they set out and realised it isn’t working.

It’s about time as Hibs definitely need to get their house in order. They need experienced people in those positions who've been in the game a long time and understand the type of player which is needed at Hibs. To hear the club say they wish to recruit someone with knowledge of the Scottish game is heartening.

Kevin Nisbet celebrates in front of the jubilant Hibs support after putting the club 1-0 up in Sunday's win over Motherwell. Picture: SNS

The first thing that needs to change is the overall recruitment policy. Trying to win with potential is very hard. At bigger clubs like Hibs you need more than that. You can gamble on a few, but the route we've taken from the start has been wrong. We need to get our house in order to make sure the decisions getting made are the right ones. Right now that's definitely not the case. We're player crowded. We've lots and lots of players, but it's mainly lots of potential with no real substance.

I don't know who the person should be, but we need a figure at the top of the club with a proven record in the game of working at top clubs. We need someone to recruit players to the club who can handle the expectations and pressure of playing for Hibs.

We gambled on potential but if you look at the clubs above us in the table, your Hearts and Aberdeens, the clubs we should be up there fighting with, the vast majority of their players are ones who already had good statures in the game when they were brought to the club.

Hibs need to get the appointment right but time is also of the essence if they want to move up the table and put pressure on those other clubs in the European spots by the end of the season. Sunday saw a good result at Motherwell. Performance wise I thought we did OK but there's still got to be a big improvement if we're going to kick on and get ourselves up there.

There's definitely a fragility about the side. There's no doubt about that. We were cruising at the weekend: up 2-0 and then 3-1, both times you think the game is over and then we're hanging on at the end. That comes down to experience as well because there's still a few players trying to find their feet at Hibs.

I'm not convinced this side at the moment is what's needed to get Hibs up the table. The results show that. Three wins in 12 games shows there's still massive improvement to come. It's not what's needed to get us third or fourth position. Recruitments will be required this month.

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