Lee Johnson admits Hibernian deserved to be booed off after Ross County defeat

Lee Johnson admitted Hibernian were “nowhere near good enough” as he picked over the bones of a fifth defeat in six games.

The Easter Road side were booed off by their own supporters after losing 2-0 at home to Ross County.

And manager Johnson made no attempt to sugar-coat a dismal cinch Premiership performance.

“It was nowhere near good enough,” he said. “I’m disappointed. It was a very young team we put out but I put that team out to be bright, energetic, technical.

“We had control but what’s control without goalmouth action? When we got into the final third we were schooled by two old school centre-halves and we’ve conceded two goals from situations we had opportunities to be organised from. If you do that it ends up costing you.

“But there were a lot of things that cost us. We deserve the criticism that will come our way, we were rightly booed off.

“Against St Mirren recently, if you were doing your marks in the paper, most of them would be getting sevens and eights but tonight it would be threes or fours.

“All we can do is rally and try and build a platform. The next performance is going to have to be dogged.”

Hibs visit Kilmarnock on Saturday in their final game before the World Cup and Johnson is hoping the five-week break allows his team to regroup.

He continued: “There’s a number of things the break can give us. We have dropped a number of points against sides we shouldn’t be dropping points against.

“We’re going to have to liven ourselves up over the second half of the season to get to where we want to be.

“There are a lot of good players to come back, we were without Kevin Nisbet, Aiden McGeady, Kyle Magennis, Martin Boyle.

“They’re pretty good players fully fit, and sometimes those players are the difference between mediocrity, and we’re not even making that (mediocrity) just now, to turning the tide.”

Ross County boss Malky Mackay was thrilled with the way his side went about making it back-to-back wins.

“In the first 10 or 15 minutes we had to withstand a bit of pressure, but then I thought we sorted ourselves out,” he said.

“For the rest of the first half I thought we were excellent, we kept a lot of the ball, to the point Hibs changed shape and actually had to do a press on us to stop Victor Loturi getting the ball.

“In the second half it was about being tactical and making sure we stayed in good shapes and didn’t let their lines come between us. Hibs are good in that area, but Ross Laidlaw was quiet in terms of getting shots at him.

“We picked their pocket again and I’m delighted with the performance and the way the boys kicked on from Saturday.

“They showed the bravery of being on the ball, especially at Easter Road against a good team.”