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Collins Arrogance Damaging Hibs?

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So it would appear that most of the rumours have been true then. John Collins has in fact allowed his arrogance to dominate the way he manages a football team to the point where none of
his players seem to respect him.

Well, according to goalkeeping calamity Simon Brown that is the case anyway. In an interview given to the Daily Ranger, Brown revealed the extent of Collins’ ‘I love me, who do you love?’-type attitude and it does make for eye-opening reading. Here is some of what Brown had to say:

‘As soon as he (Collins) walked in the door he took his shirt off in the dressing room and was showing everybody his six-pack.

‘He said, ‘This is what you have to work to and what you have to do now’. I couldn’t believe what he was doing.

‘You would never have seen Tony Mowbray doing anything like that. The pair of them are chalk and cheese.

‘It was absolutely horrendous. I didn’t know what to say – it was incredible and ridiculous and the players just laughed at him.

‘He is very arrogant. He thinks he is still a player and as a player you need that arrogance because you have to look after yourself.

‘But as a manager you can’t be like that. You have to look after the group and try to please everyone.’

Brown then went onto talk about the tension that Collins’ style of management began to have upon the players. He continued:

‘Players were fighting with each other every few days. You would sometimes get half a dozen of them fighting and I had to pull Merouane Zemmama and Michael Stewart apart in one instance.

‘Rob Jones went for Zemmama as well and Stewart and Kevin Thomson were always at each other’s throats and kicking lumps out of each other. All the players were involved at some point.

‘Some players were busting a gut in training to win a five-a-side game while others were standing around doing nothing.
‘As soon as you said something to them there was a confrontation, fisticuffs and handbags.

‘But the manager just hid and Tommy said, ‘Don’t speak to him like that because you will upset him’. What kind of b******s is that?’

It does all admittedly sound pretty bad, but there are two ways of looking at this. One is to take the Hibs players’ side and agree that Collins is just a jumped up, arrogant **** who clearly believes all the ridiculous hype that he was given as a player and indeed, thinks he still is that player. Or the other is to side with Collins and question the professionalism of his players and indeed, the professionalism of your average football player in this country.

Let’s face it, although I’m sure that certain training regimes can be pretty difficult, being a professional football player is hardly a taxing life is it? Training for a few hours a day to keep yourself in top condition and being disciplined enough to have a diet and lifestyle that makes you the best possible player that you can be is about the size of it, but some of these morons can’t even manage that. Isn’t someone like Collins, who to his credit looked after himself immensely during his own playing career, entitled to expect at least something like the same sort of dedication from his players now?

I think he is, but it does look as though he’s gone about it all the wrong way. Maybe it’s got something to do with the sort of money that average players can coin in these days and he has a problem with that, especially when they’re not pulling their weight. I’d agree with him in that case, but he has to learn that to be a manager, you have to be able to deal with your own personal gripes and treat your employees with a certain level of respect, even if they are taking the **** at times. Playing the ‘big I Am’ card is just never going to get people on your side I’m afraid.

Looks like a long, hard pre-season ahead at Easter Road…..



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