Joe Newell is adamant David Gray should not carry the can for Hibernian’s poor start to the season as he admitted the players are “not doing enough” for their under-pressure manager.
The Easter Road side go into Saturday’s match at home to St Mirren bottom of the Scottish Premiership with just one win from their 11 matches.
Hibs have been badly undermined by an inability to see games out, allowing leads to slip in the closing minutes of five of their last nine games.
Captain Newell expressed sympathy towards Gray, who has been left exasperated by the persistent late lapses that have effectively led to 11 points being squandered.
“Coming into management, it’s not easy, it’s his first job and he’ll never sit in front of you guys and not take all the responsibility himself,” said Newell, whose late red card against Dundee United three weeks ago preceded Hibs conceding two stoppage-time goals in a 3-2 defeat.
“He’ll always be honest and he’ll never shy away from it, but as the captain and as a group of players, I think we have to do so much more for him.
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“He deserves so much more than what he’s getting at the minute in terms of results. The manager and his staff have worked so hard since they’ve come in pre-season. I feel, personally, that they’ve got a group of players that should be a lot better than where we are.
“We’re not doing enough for him at the minute. He sets us up right. I think the last game (the 1-1 draw at home to Dundee United), just because it’s in the forefront of my mind, was a real good performance, tactically really good, probably just not clinical enough in the final third.
“But that should show that, as a manager, he’s setting his team up in the right way. He knows what he’s doing. Bar a late VAR call (that gave United a penalty), it should have been three points.
“Other instances throughout the season, red cards. He can’t do anything about me lunging in. We’re five minutes to go, 2-1 up.
“Or the red card for Nectar (Triantis, in the 2-1 defeat by Motherwell) or last-minute penalties. These are all things out of his control. Of course, I feel for him, we all do. We’re all desperate to turn it around, for him especially.”
Newell, who is set to make his 200th Hibs appearance against St Mirren, is confident his team, just four points adrift of the top six, will move away from danger in the coming months.
“We need to be scoring more,” he said. “We need to be more clinical going forwards to ease that pressure if it does come (late in games).
“We’re working on everything at the minute, the hard work has been continuous and we’ve still got a lot of faith.
“I firmly believe that we’ll be sitting here in a couple of months’ time, looking back and thinking that was a terrible start, but look where we are now.”
