You could call it the Star Strangled Banner because it is currently suffocating the life out of Hibs and Aberdeen. It is the flag of inconvenience that currently flies over Easter Road and Pittodrie.
Clubs owned by Ron Gordon and Dave Cormack respectively who live in the United States. But their business interests in the Premiership are now more about wars and gripes than stars and stripes. And the prospect of peace breaking out any time soon could largely depend on what takes place in the Scottish Cup in coming days.
Remember the old cliche about the cup being there to offer troubled clubs temporary respite from the pressures of league football? You have to be kidding with regard to Jim Goodwin and Lee Johnson. Goodwin may have had the dreaded vote of confidence from Cormack, in spite of Aberdeen’s 5-0 mauling from Hearts at Tynecastle on Wednesday night. But any Pittodrie manager who goes out of any cup competition, live on television, to a team from the West of Scotland League gives up the moral authority to remain in charge and only waits for formal confirmation of his dismissal.
Jim is now in a position best described as being between the Darvel and the deep blue sea. Before that drama unfolds, Johnson must view the arrival of Hearts at Easter Road this afternoon as a man tied to a railway track might look at the high-speed progress of an oncoming train.
If talk meant points Lee would have Hibs above Celtic in the league table. But talk is cheap and points are valuable. Hibs have not been gathering enough of them.
Johnson is God’s gift to the journalistic world. He never uses one word when several will do and has never knowingly passed a room where the Press are gathered in search of a high-profile comment.
Sensitivity is required, though, when positivity has left the premises. Last weekend, Johnson said: “That’s two games in a row without defeat.” He offered that quote after an injury-time goal from Hibs’ one-man salvage crew Kevin Nisbet had scrambled a fortunate draw at home against relegation-threatened Dundee United.
The game before that, which started the ‘run’ of unbeaten matches, was the odd-goal win over a hapless Motherwell side who have one league victory since October. In recent days, the only person associated with Hibs – Nisbet apart – to have
exhibited the requisite qualities of fight and indomitable spirit the team could do with is celebrity fan Andy Murray during the Australian Open in Melbourne.
Gordon’s ownership of Hibs has been characterised by getting things wrong. The removal of Jack Ross as manager was what Murray would know as an unforced error.
The situation surrounding Shaun Maloney’s appointment, followed by his dismissal 19 games later, didn’t need Hawkeye to flag up a fiasco. Should Johnson (right) suffer a cup exit at home to Hearts as emphatic as the last defeat to Robbie Nielson’s side in the league, it could be game, set and match for him in the current mood of unrest among fans.
There are, historically, five major clubs in this country – the Old Firm in Glasgow, the two in Edinburgh and the one in the Granite City. When 40 per cent of that list are toiling as badly as Hibs and Aberdeen are doing at the moment it doesn’t reflect well on brand Scotland.
Tynecastle emptying out Dons fans at half-time in midweek, with Cormack watching from the directors box on a visit home, was as regrettable as the four-goal deficit at that stage in the match. That’s 11 league defeats from 22 matches. Five away losses on the bounce.
Doing Hibs by the numbers would struggle to be heard above the intermittent booing now commonplace at Easter Road. Hearts are eight games without defeat and were rampant in midweek.
Their manager likes derby wins in the same way you and I like oxygen. Spurs boss Antonio Conte said last week a club’s hierarchy should publicly address problems at any club without the manager always having to explain everything, whether it’s his department or not. Hibs and Aberdeen would pass for a shambles.
It must be getting time for the owners of these clubs to approach the lectern and deliver their State of the Union address. Otherwise we have the start of a joke in the making. There was an Englishman, an Irishman and two expatriate owners.
The punchline will depend on the whether or not the next 48 hours are a laughing matter. A television audience of rubberneckers will be magnetically drawn to their screens to assess if damage is caused.
The Star Strangled Banner is tightening around the neck in the meantime.
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