Lee Johnson has made it crystal clear Hibs kids come first and he will never close the door on flourishing in-house talent.
But the Easter Road manager insists no one in their right mind would turn down an opportunity to exploit off-field links with major footballing superpowers in order to maximise squad strength and also tap into expertise.vJohnson is due to meet senior members of the City Football Group to discuss potential loan signings ahead of the summer transfer window.
That news sparked an angry response from former Hibee Tam McManus in his Record Sport column. The ex-striker stated he was infuriated, cited Johnson’s own talk of a snobbery down south regarding the Scottish game and also questioned a lack of chances for Hibs youths such as Josh O’Connor and Ethan Laidlaw whom he says could leave at the end of the season. However, Johnson said: “We’ve got some great young players at this club who I’m really excited about. But the reality is you have to look everywhere.
“Who in their right mind would turn down the opportunity to have a fantastic link with top clubs that are now global entities? It’s not just younger players – we’re talking about partnerships, data transfer, knowledge transfer, sponsorship.
“There are so many factors to having a good relationship with these world giants so why would you not capitalise on that? The City Football Group as an example must have about 600 players.
“And it might be a 32-year-old who has the potential to jump into a different country. Everything is assessed. If we have a young left-back coming through who we believe is going to be in the starting XI all of next year, we’re not going to be asking Liverpool, or Manchester United, or Manchester City, for their options at left-back.
“It’s all about maximising the numbers as well in a budgetary sense. At our level you have to get two or three good loans unless you’re going to play four or five 16 or 17-year-olds and they’re ready.
“The difference, for example, between a Mykola Kukharevych and a Josh O’Connor would be some physicality differences, some experience differences in terms of where they’ve played, international football, and they’re different types of players.
“We always look internally first but it has to be part of the Rubik’s Cube in terms of the squad dynamic and the budgetary dynamic to look at the bigger picture.
“You would be losing out if you didn’t have conversations with the big clubs and the superpowers that want to help you because they’ve been into the environment, they’ve seen the training ground, they’ve seen the identity of the club.
“They want to help us as well because of what we can give them back. These partnerships are two-way things. The club has signed partnerships with clubs previously and sometimes haven’t maximised them, so it’s something that’s important for us as a football club to bridge the gap.”
Johnson, for example, says the young Hibs keepers are firmly in his future thinking as he runs the rule over trialist Maksymilian Boruc. The cousin of former Celtic and Poland star Artur is training with the squad and Johnson said: “He’s done all right to be honest.
“It wasn’t something we were necessarily desperately chasing, we’ve got a good young keeper in Murray Johnson and a couple of younger ones as well who we think are very good. The thing is to keep David Marshall flying and make sure we give all of our young goalies every opportunity to be the succession plan for him.”
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