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Lee Johnson came through 'El Sackico' last weekend unscathed despite having his head on the block prior to kick-off. Indeed, the Hibs manager bore witness to the kind of public execution experienced by Jim Goodwin that might just have been his own fate had his side not just filleted Aberdeen whose manager was at a juncture where he was in even greater dire straits.
“I'm making every decision like I'm going to be here forever, knowing I could be gone tomorrow,” said Johnson on Friday prior to the Aberdeen game, fully aware of the guillotine-edged nature of the encounter.
A 6-0 victory appears to have ended the immediate prospect of Johnson being jettisoned by the Edinburgh club and, over the course of the past five league games they seem to have found a bit of form. However, it is the presence of two 3-0 defeats by Hearts in the space of a month which are the kind of results that often have a habit of undoing any other good work by a Hibs manager and, as Johnson acknowledged on Friday, he is only a defeat or two away from another full-blown crisis.
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A trip to the Highlands to face Ross County on a blustery Tuesday night, then, is hardly an ideal fixture. Certainly it's a game that on paper you look at and think Hibs should win – they have already done so once before this season when they prevailed 2-0 in October – but that result in itself changes the context to tonight's game because it brings an expectation and if they lose it will galvanise Johnson's critics once more. Yet, victory should not be considered a certainty.
Malky Mackay's side bounced back from their Scottish Cup exit at the hands of Hamilton Academical last weekend with a morale-boosting win over Kilmarnock. Having attended that match in person it soon became clear that the problems County have been facing this season emanate from a lack of cutting edge. Where they could rely on the goals of Regan Charles-Cook and creativity of Joseph Hungbo in the second half of last season, they appeared bereft of a similarly lethal combination even though those such as Yan Dhanda, Kazeem Olaigbe and Owura Edwards are tidy footballers.
That was before last Saturday, however. The arrival of erstwhile Scotland international Eamonn Brophy on loan from St Mirren appears to have given them a foil to Jordan White. There is more blunt force to this pairing and both found the target in the 3-0 win over Derek McInnes's side that lifted County off the bottom of the Premiership.
There are other reasons for Hibs to be fearful. One of County's five victories came against Hibs earlier in the campaign, albeit it came at Easter Road, while in October's corresponding fixture in Dingwall the goals were scored by Ryan Porteous and Martin Boyle, two players who won't be near the starting line-up this evening following the former's departure for Watford and the latter's season-ending injury.
The better news is that Johnson should have Kevin Nisbet for the rest of the season following the collapse of his transfer to Millwall and he has been buoyed by the recent form of Josh Campbell who ended a five-month scoring drought with his hat-trick in the thumping of the Dons.
"We talked about him scoring three or four more goals before the end of the season,” said Johnson following his treble. “I want to set him up as that box-to-box 8 or industrious 10 and he's nearly done it in one game. I feel like he's one that I have taken under my wing and tried to improve, as an ex-midfielder myself."
These are the kind of mini-projects managers embark on all the time, and ultimately, the kind that fall by the wayside should results suddenly go awry. Johnson knows this all too well.
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