The transfer window closed last Friday night, with Hibs having brought in eleven players, and shipped out quite a few more. Long term target Luke McCowan will see out the rest of the season in green and white, but it will be Celtic’s hoops he’ll be sporting after Hibs’ final deadline day bid was gazumped by the Glasgow giants’ own interest.

You can’t blame Hibs for trying, McCowan would have been an excellent signing and was seen as the missing ingredient for a midfield that has, for too long, underperformed. It wasn’t to be, though, and despite Hibs’ willingness to splash the cash, there was no ‘Plan B’, later explained away by Malky Mackay with the rationale that Hibs couldn’t get the value for money elsewhere that they would have got with McCowan.

I get the argument, although I’m not sure I agree with it. We spent £600,000 on Keiron Bowie who looks very much at home at this level in the short sightings we’ve had of him so far, and I can’t think we couldn’t have found similar quality for that money in the middle of the park. That aside, it was refreshing to see Hibs willing to stretch for the right player and hopefully, with time to spend on alternative targets, we can dip into the market in January to bolster the squad then.

So are we stronger than we were last season? At the risk of sitting on the fence, it’s too early to tell. I thought we had a great January window, and yet we slid down the table to finish eighth. I remember heralding the arrival of Jair Tavares, Nohan Kenneh, and Harry McKirdy – if being a Hibs fan has taught me one thing, which it hasn’t, it would be that it’s best to wait and see before going all in on how good or bad a new signing is. We notably didn’t bring in anyone from Bournemouth, Lorient, or Auckland. The closest we came was, again, nearly borrowing an injured Owen Bevan. Again Mackay took time to explain that this was because there were no other players available that could impact the first team at Hibs immediately, which is seemingly a condition now, but not when we brought in Junior Hoilett.

There is a bit of a contradiction with Hibs when it comes to things like this, we have a recruitment team tasked year round with scouring the leagues for suitable players – players that fit the profile to step in to Hibs’ first team, yet four of our eleven summer signings have been Hoilett (who worked with Craig Samson at Aberdeen), Mykola Kukharevych and Nectar Triantis (who have been at the club before), and Nicky Cadden (twin brother of Chris Cadden). I’m conscious that looks like a criticism, but I think it’s more something to question – are these just happy coincidences that the recruitment team identified so many players with close links to the club, or did they miss these guys and we just took advantage of their availability? If the latter, what did we do to make sure they were better than the guys the recruitment team worked on all year?

That aside, we addressed the centre-back and goalkeeper positions, where departures meant that these were the priority areas. While it’s too early to judge, both Josef Bursik and Marvin Ekpiteta have had moments to forget already this season, but the more we see them, the better they look. Warren O’Hora, mistake against Dundee aside, has looked a calm and composed presence, while Hyeok-kyu Kwon and Triantis looked a formidable partnership last Sunday against Kilmarnock. Nicky Cadden and Hoilett bring attacking intent and experience, while Jack Iredale looks to be coming to compete for the left back slot with last season’s Player of the Year, Jordan Obita, who has had a stuttering start to the season himself.

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It is Bowie and Kukharevych that excite me the most, though. Aggressive, powerful, and clinical, they provide attributes that Hibs have lacked for a while, compensated somewhat last season by the quality of Myziane Maolida. Without Myziane, though, it was vital we brought in goal scorers, particularly with Dylan Vente moving back to Holland on loan for the season.

Time will tell if we’re better than we were, but there is no question that Hibs have taken the rebuild seriously, and it feels like a team is taking shape, despite the window falling well short of the sort of activity we thought we would see with the investment from Black Knight FC back in March.