We’re done and dusted in Scotland.
We’ve lost track of the number of weeks we’ve been pushing through season seven, having fallen in and out of love with Hibernian and Hearts as we tried to break the stranglehold that Celtic and Rangers have had on the SPL for more than people care to remember.
Now, it’s all over and done with and the most we’ve been able to walk away from the cinch Premiership with is a pair of manager of the year awards, not bad for a trophy-less finish in all competitions.
To be fair, we gave this one a good rattle, got results against Rangers and Celtic early in the season but then you end up throwing points away at Ross County, Motherwell, Dundee United while the Old Firm are knocking St. Johnstone and Hamilton around for sport.
Hibernian
Going back to the first episode of our Scottish adventure, it was clear I had my work cut out for me at Hibs having come off the pure luxury of a nail-biting season with Inter (spoiler, I lost the league on the last day of the season to Juventus but managed to leave with the Coppa Italia in hand).
Reaching top of the table on three occasions, the steam went out of our league efforts a little after January/February with European games taking their toll as we advanced through the group stages of the Europa Conference League.
Looking at how the team performed on the attacking front, we did well to average 2.18 goals a game across the season, breaking 15 shots per game – some games though were absolutely dour where we struggled to get out of our own half, let alone get a shot off.
Hibs Finances
For finishing third, Hibs were awarded €2.4m in prize money but the big boost to the club was the European journey with the Europa Conference League generating €7.2m in prize money for progressing up to the second knockout round. That kept the bank account ticking over through 2023 and into 2024 with the wins in the group stage bringing in around €1m per game between win-money and gate receipts.
Hibs Results
For me, the best run of results came in the autumn, right in the run-in to Christmas, though fighting on the European and league front took its toll.
We started bright enough, beginning the season with a 3-0 win over Aberdeen (who would go on to become my bogey team, outside of hearts), while clocking up wins against AA Gent, (3-1, 4-2) and Osijek (5-1) to book our place in the Europea Conference league group stages.
Defeat to Aberdeen in league cup was the only defeat before I came out on the wrong side of a 4-3 result against Shane at the turn of the year.
The loss to Hearts sparked heavy defeats to Aberdeen and Rangers, though we bounced back well in the tail end of January and February. Aberdeen did us a second time in the space of a month, beating us 5-2 at home to dump us out of the Scottish Cup.
March to the end of the season becomes patchy. Defeat to Rangers mid-May meant Rangers won the league, with defeat to Hearts immediately afterwards costing second place. It did feel good to finish the season with a skin-full of goals all the same.
Hibs Transfers
There’s two players missing off the list below as they were bagged just before the turn of the season when I landed the Hibs job to join Shane in Scotland.
Greg Taylor landed at the very end of the previous season, joining from Celtic and going on to make 36 appearances in all competitions, primarily as a left wing back, dropping to left back in the latter part of the season with Josh Doig providing some serious competition for the starting spot.
Among the standout performers was Ireland’s Troy Parrott, signed on loan in right before the turn of the season. I’d signed Parrott for Leicester from Spurs, on loan again, in our first Wolves/Leicester season where he was great up to Christmas and then fell off the pace in the new year. There was a little of that about him for this season as well (granted, it’s different versions of FM) but his early league form was scintilating, backed up by adding ten goals in eleven games in the Europa Conference League.
I may have gotten a little excited about Troy to be fair.
Overall, the spentding was light enough up until January. Karol Fila was the big purchase in the summer window as he have Chris Cadden and Oskar Burr solid competition, making 20 starts in the league but averaging a 6.75 across the season.
While he was signed for the craic, Kilkenny’s own Gavan Holohan worked out a charm when he played. Loanded from Boreham Wood at 32 years old for a midfielder roll, Gav made 33 appearances across the season, 17 from the start and 16 off the bench, with three goals in the league and two in Europe. Those three in the league couldn’t have come at better times either.
Theo Walcott was a waste, arriving in July and out the gap in February after spending more time in the physio room than the actual club doctor. Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall had an instant impact though, featuring in new fewer than 46 games.
Part of a midfield trio with Jake Doyle-Hayes and Chris Mueller, he’ll be going back to Leicester in fine form, notching up 12 assists in the league alone, chipping in with a few goals in Eurpope too when deployed as a box to box midfielder. Don’t be alarmed by the fact he’s only 5’6″, his passing, vision, workrate and determination are big assets. Plus he’s fairly decent at a dead ball and was in the mix for corner and free taking.
Fabio Silva (again, somewhat for the craic) joined in January with Neco Williams the real target for the winter window, a move that would prove vital in the end of season challenge. Splashing the cash for an outright transfer, Alexis Claude-Maruice swapped the sunny climes of Nice for the snowy climes of Edinburgh.
Silva would break his wrist, miss six weeks and ultimately make six appearances, despite coming in with a €50-70m valuation, scoring twice in 9 appearances.
Hibs Best XI
While he broke my heart by rejecting a new contract deal to leave on a free, Dejan Stojanovic was pretty much an ever-present, missing just one game in 54, though after he signed the agreement with LASK in January, I’m convinced it was a contributing factor to him dropping form.
The majority of the season was spent playing a 5-3-2, using Pereira as an advanced forward with Parrott as a poacher. Jake Doyle-Hayes would take up the left of a midfield three, Dewsbury-Hall in the middle and Mueller on the right.
It worked until it didn’t, but as you’ll see from the appearances, this was the core of the starting team, week in, week out.
Hearts
Shane had a head start with Hearts for the end of Season 6 of the podcast having departed Milan after the January transfer window (read: he got the sack) before taking up with Hearts for the final five games of the season, still in the championship split.
The early stage of the season was a tricky one with a lot of tactical tinkering but come January, armed with a 4-2-3-1 gegenpressing approach, he managed to turn 1-0 wins into 4-0 wins, picking up the big results where it counted including a clean sweep of the head-to-head games against Hibs.
Competition-wise, it was a second placed finish for Hibs in the league with three cup competitions contended. Napoli put paid to any hope of decent European football early on as they knocked Hearts out in the fourth qualifying round of the Europa Conference League while the Scottish Cup ended at the semi-final stages thanks to Celtic with Rangers taking a quarter-final win in the Premier Sports Cup.
On the attacking front, Hearts were a little more active in front of goal than Hibs, but both sides were fairly even for the most part.
Hearts Finances
With a wage bill running to €151k a week and no European cash coming in after August you can see the tail off in finances through the latter end of the season. There’s no net debt at the club.
Hearts Results
While Hibs had the better of the first half of the season, Hearts had it in the second, largely thanks to a change to a 4-2-3-1 gegenpress after Christmas that saw Hearts drop just two defeats in the league, including a clean swepe of the head-to-heads.
European football ended in August but October and November would prove tricky with just one win from six. December finished strong though, a 2-1 win over Motherwell on St. Stephen’s Day before edging Hibs at the end of the month in a game that had it all.
Consistency is key though, with an unbeaten run starting with the win over Hibernian at the end of the year stretching through to March when Rangers were really stepping things up a gear.
Hopes of a Scottish Cup final faded in April with a 118th minute goal from Celtic in their cup semi-final. Dropping points against Motherwell, Aberdeen and Celtic going down the stretch, bounce-back wins over Hibs and Rangers ensured a strong finish on the last day of the season to finish second.
Hearts Transfers
Having had a few weeks head start by taking on hearts for the final five games of the previous season, Shane set to work early on the transfers. Sam Gallagher, Mark Gillespie, Josh Maja and Edwin Andersson were first in the door, followed quickly by ex Man City youngster Patrick Roberts. Following loan spells at Middlesbrough, Derby and Troyes, Roberts wouldn’t play a single game in the 22/23 season before landing at Hearts on a free transfer.
Patrik Gunnarsson landed mid-July to become the first-choice goalkeeper, backed up by Jack Butland in January. Chuba Akpom would prove vital, hitting 16 goals in 28 league appearances, while Ethan Amundsen-Day and Ganso would feature after January.
All in all, some shrewd signings, primarily end-of-contract and free agents that would bolster the Hearts ranks and steer them to their best league finish since the mid noughties.
Hearts Best XI
For the season, Shane started loosely with his Galatasary tactic, employed in Turkey and for a spell at Milan (reads like a 2-2-2-2-2 with two centre-backs, two wing-backs, two in the middle of the park, two more on the wings and two up top with a target forward and a poacher.
From January onwards, it was a gegenpressing 4-2-3-1 and while the selection below may not have been regular, it worked out as the best
End of Season Table
For Hibs, the best run of form was in the first half of the season, top of the table by game week eight for a month and never dropping below fourth from there on.
With things being tight at the top in the close ten games, Hibs would yo-yo between second and third, dropping to fourth in the penultimate week of the season before leap-frogging Celtic on goal difference.
Hearts started brightly, holding on to second spot in the league in the early weeks, dropping to fifth by game week nine and staying there for 13 consecutive weeks before the climb started, up to fourth, third on the second last day of the season with a 1-0 over Rangers and finishing strong to take second place by a point.
While Rangers peeled away late on, Celtic’s sticky run of form in the last two months cost them dearly, leaving them with a fourth-place finish.
To their credit, Rangers had a phenomenal season, doing the domestic treble by beating Celtic on penalties in the Scottish Cup Final the week after the league wrapped up. Hearts’ Josh Maja would finish top scorer in the cup with four goals.
What we’ve only learned in putting this post together is that while I (Ken) had collected the Scottish Football Writers’ Manager of the Year award, Shane would claim the overall SPFL Manager of the Year with a 52% win ratio and 499 points earned over 38 games. Steven Gerrard, who jumped ship from Rangers with the club in pole position to take up the relegation rescue job at Brentford in March would finish second with a 64% win ratio from 28 games, while I would finish in third, 52% win ratio from the 38 games and picking up 426 manager points.
Having started so brightly, Troy Parrot struggled with league goals in the second-half of the season leading to Danilo Pereira filling in the gaps. The 25-year old Brazilian had arrived at Hibs the season previous on a free transfer from Ajax but hit some great form in the league this time out, notching 24 goals in 33 league apperances, bagging seven assists and a 7.2 average rating.
By comparison, Hearts Chuba Akpom was left trailing in second with 16 goals while Hibs’ Kevin Nisbet finished two further back in third with 14 goals and three assists. It’s the first time since records were recored to 1999 that a Hibs player would top the goalscoring charts.
What happened next
Well, as outlined in episode 81, we’ve decided to roll the dice and break up the band. Once things ended inScotland, even before we got to the end of year league awards, we decided to go our separate ways. Both teams were served notice that we’re out the gap and rather than jump straight into new clubs (which we had the save set up for), we elected to enter the job market, push for interviews and see what we could land.
In something of a silly move, I (Ken) removed Scotland instead of South Africa from running leages, meaning our Scottish history and staffing is no longer available, but on the plus side, every single manager job in two divisions in South Africa was. So, having missed out on two interviews, Shane is taking over Orlando Pirates for the coming season to get to grips with things south of the equator while I’m off to France having landed the job at relegation-favoured Toulouse.
So while we may well be breaking up the band, for this season, the craic continues on separate continents as we edge towards the release of Football Manager 2023.
