How Hibs recruitment will work under new regime as David Gray's role clarified

Since the Gordon family took over at Hibs, there has been an understandable focus on recruitment.

The club has spent millions on new players - and not all of it has been invested soundly. For every Elie Youan, there is an Elias Melkersen. The arrival of Malky Mackay as sporting director is likely to bring about a shift in focus.

You can already see that with the signings made during this pre-season. Twenty three-year-old goalkeeper Josef Bursik comes in from Club Brugge but has British football experience with Stoke City, while defenders Warren O'Hora (25) and Marvin Ekpiteta (29) have years of playing in the EFL. Their characters and mentalities have been talked up. Hibs are not taking too many chances in that area of the pitch - one that was neglected to their cost last season.

Mackay explained just how Hibs' recruitment will work under his watch as he addressed the media earlier this week alongside new head coach David Gray.

David Gray and Malky Mackay will work closely together on recruitment. | SNS Group

“We’re going to have a recruitment department with a process, which is something I learned works as a young manager," said Mackay. "I worked with a sporting director at Watford, John Stephenson, a long time ago where there was a process and a really defined way of recruiting players.

“All we’re trying to do is take the risk factor down in terms of players not working. You want there to be a strong chance that, out of ten players, seven work out.

“There are always going to be one or two that don’t work out or one reason or another but you don’t want it to be two out of ten that work out.

“I was lucky enough that I was taught about a recruitment process many years ago. It was something I lifted across to Cardiff, took to the Scottish FA where we built a recruiting department and there are now talent ID courses across Scotland - there are a lot of people learning about it. It’s something that sporting directors on the continent have been doing for 25 years.

“You saw that title going down to England ten years ago, and now there are assistant sporting directors in England.  It’s something that, in terms of recruitment departments with sporting directors running them, it’s a process.

“We’ll get to a point where there are a number of players for a position who we can afford, who we can possibly get, who will work well in our team, or has potential and whether we’re signing them as a starter, or back-up, or a youngster who’s come through our academy.

Josef Bursik is one of three new signings at Hibs. | SNS Group

“Once we get to that point a group of us including David Gray will talk through the options. Nothing will be getting done at this football club without David’s complete involvement.

“We do this together, and we make sure that we bring in the correct character. The character of the player has to be to a point where there’s a real reasoning why they’re coming into this football club.

“It’s certainly something we’ve been needing - more leadership in the team. That’s something we’ve all acknowledged and we want players to be able to come in and hit the ground running and be at a level where they can go in and take the club back to the areas it should be.

“There’s going to be a lot of hard work involved. Some we’ll get, some we won’t, but we will work together and make sure that more often than not, the players who come in are going to be of benefit to Hibs on a longer-term basis by showing their skills on the pitch and pushing us up the league and getting us to finals and semi-finals.”