David Gray made a massive selection call on Tuesday night ahead of Hibs vs Aberdeen.
He dropped his underperforming No.1 goalkeeper Josef Bursik after his howler against Dundee at the weekend and put stand-in goalie Jordan Smith in his place.
Smith was presented the chance to show he is worthier than Bursik in becoming Hibs’ main man between the sticks – but some will argue he didn’t do that.
BBC Sportsound pundit Michael Stewart is in that camp after watching Smith fail to deal with a cross that led to Aberdeen’s second goal of the thrilling 3-3 draw at Easter Road.
And former Hibs midfielder Stewart thinks Gray now has a massive call to make over who he picks between Bursik and Smith on Saturday against Motherwell and into the busy festive period.
Josef Bursik or Jordan Smith for Hibs?
Stewart said: “(The comeback draw) gives a little bit of hope and belief to the players and fans and everyone connected to the club. But the weekend quickly comes around and it needs to be there again.
“And I’m telling you, the manager has got a monumental decision to make – who does he put in goals, honestly?
“And by the way, there’s no right or wrong answer here because neither of them are going to be filling you full of confidence.
“This is the fundamental flaw in it all and this is where I’ve had sympathy for David Gray to a great extent, there’s a lot of players there and they’re not good enough, plain and simple.
“We’re talking about success here and success for Hibs now is avoiding relegation. But if you’re going to have any sort of success as a team, you need to build a strong backline and a spine to build from!
“And Hibs for a number of years have not been good enough defensively. They’ve had a ‘keeper in David Marshall for a couple of years coming towards the end of his career, but a good ‘keeper.
“Hibs need to get a goalkeeper and two centre-halves pronto if they’re going to have any hope of getting up the table. At the moment, they don’t have that.
“And until they have that, they’ll need to just fight and scrap, they just need to do anything to try and get points and with points, it buys them a wee bit of time to get through and then they need to recruit properly.
“There’s only so much you can do with some of these players which aren’t at the level that is required.”
Stewart makes point about 13/14 vs 14/15 Hibs squads
Stewart went on to point out that Hibs’ squad during their first season in the Championship after relegation in 2014 was better than the team that went down the year before.
And he claims the reason for that was Hibs recruited players from the Scottish market – personnel who were familiar with the SPFL and could acclimatise easily – as opposed to the club’s recruitment in recent years that hasn’t gone down that path.
He said: “This is what infuriates me about some people who are involved in recruitment. I was talking to John McGinn yesterday and if you look back at his team at Hibs when they were relegated and in the Championship.
“If you look at the season previously when they got relegated. And this is warped and illogical thinking. If you look at the squads between the two seasons, it was night and day!
“The squad they had in the Championship – and this was over one or two transfer windows – was far superior. And a lot of them were Scottish players, guys that knew the league!