PAUL HANLON admits that he and his Hibernian team-mates must learn lessons from what turned out to be a sobering afternoon in Glasgow for the Leith outfit.
Lee Johnson’s side were 3-0 down within the opening 25 minutes at Celtic Park on Saturday and although they improved in the second half – and reduced the deficit to two goals when Eli Youan coolly slotted home not long after the restart – the champions’ quality eventually told as they chalked up a resounding win.
The result means Hibs have now suffered back-to-back losses but before attention turns to Friday night’s encounter with St Johnstone, Hanlon insists the team will pore over the details of the defeat in order to learn from the painful experience.
“It was a poor performance from us,” the centre-back said. “When you come here you can’t give away early goals. We did that and it put us on the back foot and them on the front foot. It made it a very difficult afternoon.
“It’s hard to put a finger on what exactly went wrong but we probably didn’t put enough pressure on them around our box and didn’t get enough contacts with putting tackles in and things looked that.
“There was a lot of hard work from everyone to shuffle into positions but we weren’t really affecting anything once we got there.
“We’ll have a big debrief about it and go over the goals and all of the other aspects of the game that we need to improve on. It’s a learning experience for a lot of the younger lads. We’ll all learn individually and collectively.
“We can’t just brush it off. We’ve got a big fan base and there’s a lot of pressure on us in terms of expectancy. We’ve got a big game next week coming up now. We always need a debrief to look at what we cold do better no matter who he opposition is.
“At the end of the day, teams will come here and have tough afternoons like we have but we need go back and go over every goal and every reaction in the game and see how we can all improve.
“We were in a really good place, confidence-wise and performance-wise, just going back a couple of games.
“We’ve hit a wee bump in the road now with two defeats. We need to refocus, learn from what went wrong on Saturday and try to get back top where we were in terms of confidence and performance levels.
“We need too put it to bed. It’s only really been one really bad performance.
“At Dundee United, the performance was okay. We probably should have got something from the match.
“As I say, we need to learn from it and refocus. We need to make sure now that St Johnstone is a positive result.”
Friday evening’s match will be a watershed moment for the Premiership. For the very first time, VAR will be in play and Hanlon believes its introduction can only be a good thing.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he added. “It’s a helping hand for the referees who come under a lot of pressure with all the big decisions in this country. So anything that can give them a hand [is welcome].
“As a centre-half, I’m not looking forward to running back as much when it’s a blatant offside. Now I’ll need to run all the way back until the linesman puts his flag up! It might add to my mileage in the game.
“But, at the end of the day, if it helps get all the decisions correct then it will be all the better for the game.
‘I think at the start in England everyone was sort of hesitant with their celebrations. But you can see that it’s clearing up decisions. There are big stakes at play in football now, especially in the top leagues so I think it will benefit us all.
“I understand the argument, definitely, in terms of it coming in halfway through a competition but we’ve worked hard to get it implemented so let’s get it rolling and see how it goes.”
