Former Hibernian winger Aiden McGeady has claimed his old club needs a change in culture, as he reflected on his 12 months at Easter Road. 

The 38-year-old, who is now at Ayr United in a joint player/technical manager role, spent the 2022/23 Scottish Premiership campaign with t but managed just 14 games in all competitions during an injury-hit season. But appearing on the Open Goal podcast with Simon Ferry, Paul Slane, and Andy Halliday, he recalled the 'weird thing' about his signing and questioned the lack of accountability for recruitment decisions during his time at the club. 

“I think they’re trying to get it right now at Hibs with recruitment. In the past, I don’t think anyone was held accountable for recruitment and things were going on and there were that many different people saying, ‘Oh, it wasn’t me’," McGeady said. 

“Lee Johnson could probably say that ten or 12 of the signings last summer weren’t his, even though they might have been, because there were that many people involved in the recruitment and signing of players. There was just this conveyor belt of players coming in. We’d signed 15, and by January they wanted rid of 11 of them. Eleven brand-new players. At any other club in the world, if you brought in 15 new players and three months later 11 of them are told they’re not good enough, surely there are questions for the head of recruitment or the director of football or the chief executive - ‘What are you doing here?’ Now, people will be held accountable so there’s nowhere to turn if it doesn’t go well."

McGeady had played under Johnson at Sunderland, and was on the radar of Johnson's predecessor Shaun Maloney, so his move to Hibs wasn't a huge surprise. But the winger found it bizarre that he only dealt with the manager when he was agreeing the terms of his contract. 

“The weird thing for me was that I just dealt with Lee Johnson when I signed. I was speaking to him on the phone and I was texting him and he agreed my contract. Normally you tell a manager you want to sign and he gets the chief executive in to deal with the contract, but at Hibs, Ben Kensell didn’t deal with it at all. I never dealt with the owner, or the head of recruitment at the time, which was Ian Gordon."

McGeady believes there needs to be a change in culture at Hibs, and branded it 'unacceptable' that Hibs had only finished third once in 15 years when he arrived at the club.

“There’s got to be a change in the culture at Hibs and I think there is starting to be. But when I was there the stat was that the team had finished third once in 15 years, which is unacceptable for a team like Hibs. Then we looked at the other stats and we hadn’t beaten Hearts in four years.

"We were talking about it in the dressing room after we’d been beaten by Hearts at New Year, and there was a big discussion after it. I remember saying, ‘This team hasn’t beaten Hearts for four seasons, so Hearts have managed to get relegated, come back up, and go above us in the table and we still haven’t beaten them once? That is unacceptable'."

McGeady again put it down to recruitment, adding: "Hearts were a better team, they had better players and it probably goes back to recruitment. Hearts recruited really well and signed British-based players who knew the league."