Lee Johnson sticking to ‘bold’ principles as he seeks to fix Hibernian slump

Lee Johnson will continue with his bold approach to management as he tries to fix a slump in form at Hibernian.

The former Sunderland, Bristol City and Barnsley manager, who took over at Easter Road in May, watched his side booed off by their own supporters on Tuesday night after losing 2-0 at home to Ross County.

Hibs are seventh in the Premiership with just one win in six ahead of Saturday’s trip to Kilmarnock, their last fixture before the break for the World Cup and where Johnson will again be without key players such as Harry McKirdy, Jake Doyle-Hayes, Kevin Nisbet and Aiden McGeady through injury.

Asked a general question about the brutal business of modern-day management, Johnson reiterated his football philosophy.

“You give everything you can at the moment in time,” said Johnson, who had no complaints about the criticism.

“You work with what you’ve got and try to do the best you possibly can.

“As a football manager, part of the role is to make peace with the worst-case scenario and that allows you to be bold.

“The one thing that can never be thrown at me is that I’m not bold in terms of decision making.

“I have always felt like that, I played like that in terms of I didn’t fear. It is my personality. You obviously have to manage the players you have got.

“Look at our injury list, you might have to tweak the dial because you are missing three or four pieces of the jigsaw.

“I don’t always get it right but the way for us to improve is to have longevity, to have the same manager, to have four, five, six transfer windows.

“We want to be third, minimum, but it is a work in progress, to get there.

“I don’t know the history. Someone mentioned we have finished third three or four times in 35 years so we have to be different, not necessarily over-complicate things but be better at what we do over a period of time so in that case there has to be a collective.

“However, focus always turns to the manager based on those individual results and unfortunately as a manager that is one of the considerations you have to live with and now with a social media element that can fire a particular theory, feeling or pattern very quickly, it becomes something you have to manage.

“But it doesn’t stop you doing your job in the correct way and I feel here that I have the support of everybody and feel like we are going to be successful.”