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David Gray’s men still defending 13-game unbeaten run in league despite Scottish Cup loss to Celtic
Hibs star Jordan Smith believes their season will be viewed as a “failure” if they don’t bounce back from their Scottish Cup exit by finishing the league campaign with a flourish. But he says the entire squad are determined to put together a rousing closing stretch that fans will remember years.
Yesterday’s quarter-final loss to Celtic at Celtic Park brought an end to a 15-game run without loss for David Gray’s men. They’re still 13 unbeaten in the league and sitting third in the Scottish Premiership with nine games remaining.
With the battle for European places likely to go down to the wire, former Nottingham Forest goalie Smith believes going unbeaten between now and the end of the season should be the target, declaring: “Absolutely, you want to win every game that you play in. The manager is really good at incentivising us in terms of making our own history. He comes up with little facts or historical data that challenges us every game, and just those little bits might make all the difference.
“So, the fact that this current squad could do something that people remember for a long time going forward is something that we want to do.
Soft underbelly accusations hurt
“We were accused of having a soft underbelly probably at the start of the season and I think our character has probably been questioned an awful lot of times since. We've come up with the answers, and that's testament to the boys and how much we get on and get around each other. We've really got each other's backs - and I hope that shows.”
Asked if the accusation had hurt, Smith said: “Yes, of course. You have to take it personally. I think if you don't take it personally, you're in the wrong profession.
“It's going to happen; that’s par for the course in football. Once or maybe twice you can get away with, for want of a better phrase, but the fact it was happening almost every week, how can that happen and then you still ask the fans to back you? But they did, and we had to have some hard conversations, and luckily the questions that were asked of ourselves, we found some answers, though not all.”
Summer signing Smith, who has just signed a contract extension tying himself to Hibs until 2028, knows that the team falling short of their goals now will give critics the ideal excuse to raise the same questions about mentality and bottle, the 30-year-old saying: “One hundred percent, yes. You've hit the nail on the head.
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“Obviously it was disappointing to lose and go out of the competition, the Scottish Cup, the way that we have. And it’s easy to say that full focus turns to the league, but naturally it does.
“The position we've got ourselves in, we’ve worked so hard to get into that space. But we need to see this job over the line, because if we didn't, ultimately, we'd probably be seen as a failure.”
Player summit turned season around
Reflecting on the turnaround that saw Hibs go from relegation battlers to Euro contenders on the back of a run that saw them lose just once in 18 games, Smith said: “There's no hiding place, to be honest with you, in football. If things are going well, if things are going really badly, you still have to turn up, you still have to do your job.
“Because we've got such a good squad, I think we relied on certain players and certain characters who've maybe been in a similar position or even bought into the naivety of the boys who hadn't been in that position and gone: ‘We need to change this.’ Whichever way around it was, we just knew that we had to find an answer. The only other route would be not turn out on the football pitch, which is simply not acceptable.
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“As I said, and it was reported on at the time, we held internal meetings just amongst players and staff and said, how do we fix this? Because ultimately it was before the window was open, so the squad was set. So, if we didn't find those answers, it was certainly going to be a long old season.
“We made sure that everyone spoke in those meetings, everyone had a say. Whether it was right, wrong or indifferent, just get your opinion out there.
“And whoever it was, everybody else listened because someone might have come up with the one thing. We owed it to ourselves, we owed it to the manager, we owed it to the special sets of fans to make sure that we have more days like these last 15 games we've just been on - and less of those like Sunday.”
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