Newell on the scathing verdict that should hurt Hibs the most

For the Easter Road side, Saturday's home humiliation against St Mirren pushed a season that has meandered along in the 'underwhelming' bracket towards the precipice of something else entirely. The sheer abjectness of their performance was not lost on Joe Newell, who could do nothing other than agree with manager Nick Montgomery's assessment that his team were 'outfought, outran, and outcompeted' by a hungrier opponent who punished them brutally with three first-half goals.

The Hibs captain cut a visibly dejected figure in front of the media post-match, and is savvy enough to know that talk is cheap when anger on the terraces spills out as vehemently as it did all throughout the game. He did not attempt to sugarcoat what the fans had just witnessed, and made it abundantly clear that the absence of fight ought to trigger significant soul-searching in the dressing room.

"We were miles off it, no excuses," said Newell. "I don’t know the reason for it, just miles off the standard required in terms of the ugly side of the game, before I even talk about quality on the ball. On the other side, I just thought we were miles away - from all of us.

"First goal was just second balls, which I thought they were on top of us all game. That’s what you expect and it should be a given. They got 1-0 up, get a penalty, then the set-piece. Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. They were brilliant, fair play to them and I think we have a real challenge on our hands now.

"I don’t mind if people have a bad game, I’ll have a bad game. I’ll kick the ball out of the pitch plenty of times, it’s the fight and desire - if someone questioned that of me that’s what would hurt me the most. So I think to question ourselves on it, it really needs to be a turning point and discussion among ourselves. Initially, my overriding feeling at the minute is that before anything else."

Monday, Newell says, will bring a rather painful postportem at East Mains. And while there must be serious reflection on how alarmingly it all fell apart at the weekend, focus will then turn to how Hibs put it right. The upcoming fixture list is not kind, with Celtic coming to Easter Road on Wednesday, followed by a perilous Scottish Cup trip to Inverness Caledonian Thistle, then back north to Pittodrie a week later.

It means that if a turnaround is coming, it must materialise in the face of some gruelling tests. But Newell has been around the Scottish Premiership long enough to know that even a small run of positive results can change perceptions dramatically in such a tight division. 

Players have had meetings in the past, the manager and coaches, no matter what game it is the result, performance - we always have a very thorough debrief. The coaches work very hard in tiers if the analysis of games so that will happen first thing in the morning. Hibs signed seven players across the January transfer window, and although the optimism which rose from a busy end to the month was vanquished in 90 minute awful minutes, Newell is confident the new arrivals can still make a telling contribution.

READ MORE: Every word from Joe Newell Hibs Q&A after loss to St Mirren

"It’s a bad day, a dreadful first half and we’re just making it so hard for ourselves at the moment," he said. "But we’ve still got a chance. If you put a couple of wins together it can look a lot different. We brought in a lot of quality in the window, a big turn around, massive change. That’s no excuse in terms of bedding the players in, first half we didn’t think it was anything to do with that. We have plenty of talent and quality to turn it around coming into a huge part of the season.

"If the new players didn’t know what the league, there you go. You are coming up against a team who are very well organised who will fight and scrap and graft for everything. It should be a given but that is the standard, the bare minimum that teams do up here and if they didn’t know before there are absolutely no questions now.