Fletcher to stay with Hibs
By: Ian Rose | December 6th, 2007Steven Fletcher has committed to a long term contract with Hibernian, ending the rumors that he would be headed to either Glasgow or the Premier League. The Hibs star, aged 20, has scored 7 goals this season in the SPL, and is second (far) behind Celtic’s Scott McDonald for the league scoring title. The BBC is reporting that the deal will make Fletcher the highest-paid player at Easter Road.
This is, of course, great for Hibs. Fletcher is one of the best young strikers in Scotland, and isn’t far from earning his way onto the full national team. But aside from that, this is a great story for Scottish football. Fletcher came up through the Hibs youth academies, probably the best development program in the country. Now that he’s begun to reward all that investment and live up to his potential, there was a danger that he would jump ship, as so many others have, to the Old Firm or to England. Last year it was Scott Brown, who left Hibs for Celtic, and joined former Hibs Chris Killen and Gary Caldwell there. Hibs were also unable to hold onto Ivan Sproule, who danced off to Bristol City. If Scottish football is ever going to have a reliable second-tier, a group of teams outside of the Old Firm that can compete not only domestically but in Europe, teams like Hibs, Hearts and Aberdeen are going to have to hold onto their young stars.
So, nice work to Fletcher on securing his long-term future at Hibs. I just hope he doesn’t celebrate by walking all over my Caley boys this weekend.
Category: Hibernian
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This is very good news. One thing about smaller leagues (including France, Germany, Netherlands, and Portugul) is that the domestic giants use the smaller clubs as feeder leagues, which keeps them in command of their leagues and competition to a minimum. Of course these clubs in turn are feeders for the bigger clubs. What an awful food chance. You can’t even blame the players for wanting the move because higher wages and CL football are very enticing.
It also sucks for smaller Scottish clubs because unlike Portuguese, Dutch, German, and French clubs, the SPL have a hard time attracting cheap quality foreign nationals, especially South Americans and Africans, because those players prefer to play on the continent (except Hearts, who gets all those eastern Europeans…).
Still, Hibernian is putting their foot down, and maybe they won’t be able to challenge for the title this season, but who knows, one day a club not named Rangers or Celtic might make a shock run for the CL qualifying second spot.
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Like two seasons ago, when Hearts did it????
(2005-06 SPL was 1. Celtic, 2. Hearts, 3. Rangers)
But, yeah, I get your point. I think if one team is going to step up and be a consistent third challenger, it has to be either Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen or Dundee United. I would like it to be Aberdeen or Hibs, and I think Hibs has the better shot, despite Aberdeen doing decently in this year’s UEFA Cup. Edinburgh is split down the middle fan-wise just like Glasgow, and the success of one Edinburgh side tends to will the other one forward, so consistent success in Edinburgh really could be the key to a strong second tier of the SPL.
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