Hibs enjoying a scintillating run of form

BEFORE the recent home match against Dundee, we had to look back to that grim Saturday back in mid-November at Dens Park to find an example of Hibs losing a match to a Scottish side that wasn’t all-conquering Celtic.

That abysmal 4-1 defeat for David Gray’s men back on November 23 had fans calling for the manager to be sacked and left Hibs sitting at the bottom of the league with just one win from 12 league matches—that’s relegation form.

A quirk in the SPFL fixture schedule meant that Hibs didn’t face the dark blues again until this month. In the intervening five months and 23 matches, Hibernian have been transformed on the pitch from hopeless basement dwellers to near certainties to finish third in the SPFL Premiership.

This time, it was Edinburgh’s Green and White dishing out a drubbing to the Dees, winning 4-0, with goals coming from Rocky Bushiri, Dwight Gayle and a brace from young Kieron Bowie (above). Dundee weren’t that bad, but Hibs were excellent in the match. It’s hard to believe that this encounter was played out largely by the same two squads of players who had met back in November. The difference between the Hibs of then and the Hibs of now is like night and day.

That 23-match run by the Green Jerseys since the Dens debacle does include a league defeat at Celtic Park and a Scottish Cup loss there, too, but those are insignificant when we see that the Hibees have won 14 and drawn seven of the other matches, since that dismal day back in November.

As a keen statistician myself, I can’t find a single example of such a turnaround in Hibee fortunes during any season. There has been at least one longer unbeaten run of 24 matches, but that was just after the Second World War, and what’s happened this season is arguably a greater achievement, given how badly the campaign began this term. Hibs are now displaying title-contender form.

The title itself may be out of reach, but second place is still a mathematical possibility for David Gray’s side, though also a high improbability due to the utter collapse on the part of Rangers that such an ending to the season will require. Hibs will finish third, though. Had any writer or pundit back in mid-November suggested that Hibs would enter the post-split phase of the league campaign with a mathematical chance of finishing second, they’d have been put into a straightjacket.

The Hibees’ seven year, 24-match winless league run against Rangers has finally come to an end, too. David Gray recently led a Hibs side to victory over Rangers at Ibrox for the first time since Neil Lennon did the same thing back in early 2018. Goals from Dylan Levitt and Martin Boyle back at the start of April ended that particular hoodoo in a match where Gray’s Hibs looked assured, confident and more akin to the better Hibs sides of Stubbs, Lennon, Collins and Mcleish, than to the shambles that was many Hibs sides in this fixture during the Kensell-era—Hibernian’s dark age.

The irony of Gray’s superb successes as Hibs boss this season is that he got the job, not because Hibernian needed a successor to Nick Montgomery, but because Hibs needed a successor to Neil Lennon and at last, after five largely bad appointments—fugazi Covid-19 season aside—that’s exactly what Hibs have. Hibs have a proper football manager for the first time since late 2018 and the fans are loving it. There’s a feeling among Hibs fans now that almost anything is possible; unity has returned to the fanbase, stay-way fans are going back, and, above all, there’s the return of that commodity that all football fans need—hope. Nobody dreads the weekend’s matches anymore.

The week before that superb victory at Ibrox, Hibs demolished doomed St Johnstone 3-0 at Easter Road, Boyle, Bowie and Hoilett getting the goals. Hibs have now beaten everybody in the league this season at least once, except St Mirren. Gray’s men will have one last chance to do that, though, as the Buddies pipped hapless Hearts to a top-six spot, meaning there’ll be no further Edinburgh Derby this season. Oh well...