It’s been revealed that Guillaume Beuzelin (Boozy) is out for the rest of the season with cruciate knee ligament damage, sustained against Kilmarnock in the January 2nd game down in Ayrshire, and that is a huge blow to the Hibees as Boozy has been instrumental in midfield so far this season and after last Fridays exploratory op. gave us the worst news possible.
Manager Tony Mowbray said :-
“When you lose a quality player like Guillaume, it's time for the young players to step forward and take the maturing process on further, hopefully, we will get one or two bodies in over January but I have to prioritise the small amount of money we have available.
"We've got Scott Brown, Kevin Thomson and Stephen Glass who can play central midfield and Michael Stewart and Antonio Murray are coming back from injuries, so there are other areas we may have to look at first.”
Also out of this weekends upcoming Scottish cup tie at Easter Road against third division Arbroath is Gary Smith and Dean Shiels (back problem) and it also looks likely that the game will come to soon for Antonio Murray and Micheal Stewart though David Murphy, could make an appearance at some stage after being out since Novembers League cup game at Eastend Park, but if not then he will return in the midweek reserve game.
Also struggling are Gary O’Connor and Kevin Thomson who are both trying to shake off chest infections and Steven Fletcher who came off after the Killie game with a tight groin.
Arbroath manager, John McGlashan has said there will be no appeal of Alan Brazils Monday Derby sending off against Montrose and that will rule him out of a place in the Red Lichties squad that travels to Easter Road. Alan is the son of Former Hibs Defender Ally
There are other players in the Red Lichties squad with a connection to Hibs including 32 Year old Chris Jackson and Former Hibees manager Alex Miller’s laddie, 29 year old Greg Miller, also a former player at Hibs, and now the Hibees U15 coach as of the start of this season.
Third Division Arbroath are expected to bring down around 1,000 fans with 300+ already on the official Buses that the club are running, and if you add them to the fans traveling independently, coming down via car, train, boats and submarines then they won’t be far short of the estimate given above.
Cup Games are all about one offs and the cup is littered with fairy tails of smaller clubs putting one over the bigger clubs but in this case I think Hibs will be to strong for the
Brian
GGTTH