Tony focuses Hibs minds on Euro return

Dnipro 5 Hibs 1

Dnipro win 5-1 on aggregate

HIBS arrived back in Edinburgh in the early hours of this morning out of the UEFA Cup - but certainly not down. For as they made their weary way home to bed following the return trip from the Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, no doubt having spent the four-hour flight contemplating their 5-1 defeat, boss Tony Mowbray was already focusing minds on Sunday's SPL clash with Inverness Caledonian Thistle. For it is only by winning such matches, as they did throughout last season, can the Easter Road club's ambition of making European football an annual event be realised.

Throughout his 16-month tenure as manager, Mowbray has continually described the experiences his young side have encountered as a "learning curve." By finishing third in the League last season, so ensuring a European adventure, however brief, Mowbray's kids showed they were quick learners, confounding everyone who greeted his philosophy that entertaining football could produce results with scepticism.

Another of Mowbray's views on football is that the bar has to be continually raised, that players, individually and collectively, must strive to become the very best they can.

So, with that in mind, Mowbray will no doubt today be hoping that however harsh the outcome of Hibs' 3600-mile round trip to face Dnipro might have been, the lessons to be learned will be as quickly grasped as others encountered in domestic competition.

And undoubtedly the first of those will be that experience most certainly does count in football, Dnipro a side immersed in European competition in recent years - they've reached the last 32 twice in succession - displaying the sort of game knowledge and craft of which Mowbray so often highlights. Quality finishing was, as Mowbray pointed out, a major reason why Dnipro advance to the lucrative group stages of this year's competition rather than Hibs, the two sides enjoying virtually as many shots on goal as the other, the difference being that the Ukrainians invariably found the net.

As if to underline that particular point, Mowbray illustrated that with the score 3-1 in favour of the home side, Derek Riordan sidefooted Steven Fletcher's low cross wide rather than into the net, only for Dnipro to break forward and end the tie with a fourth goal.

Mowbray said: "Instead of being 3-2 down we were 4-1 behind within the space of a couple of minutes so there are lessons there for all of us to learn quickly." His comments weren't meant as a criticism of Riordan but served merely to illustrate where and how the game was lost, Hibs having recovered from the shock of losing a goal within the first minute, Sergiy Nazarenko allowed too much space to mishit a shot which reared up off the turf and off the startled Guillaume Beuzelin to leave Zibi Malkowski wrong-footed.

The Polish goalkeeper, though, was in the right place to prevent Nazarenko, singled out by Mowbray as possibly the most talented individual present, doubling Dnipro's lead before Hibs displayed signs of finally finding their feet.

Riordan found Artem Kusily too tough to beat after evading the offside trap before skipper Gary Caldwell picked him out pulling to the left of the Dnipro penalty area, the waif-like striker taking the ball on his chest and if not quite making clean contact doing enough to put the ball past the Dnipro goalkeeper.

It was a strike which silenced the home fans, who had turned the Meteor Stadium - which bore more than a passing resemblance to Meadowbank - into a cacophony of noise but, sadly, the silence proved less than golden as Hibs proved the maxim that football teams are at their most vulnerable just after they have scored as Dnipro took the lead again just 80 seconds later. Mowbray expressed his disappointment that the goal came from a corner, Hibs having appeared, at least thus far this season, to have eradicated that particular frailty from their game, Malkowski pulling off a point-blank save from Bogdan Shershun's head only for the same player to fire home after the initial rebound had been blocked.

And Hibs were up against it when Austrian referee Fritz Stuchlik pointed to the spot after Chris Hogg tangled with Sergey Kornilenko despite being some distance from the action while his assistant, who didn't flag, was much better placed to make a judgement.

It was a decision which Mowbray described as "soft" but one which changed the entire emphasis of the game, bearing in mind the fact that a score draw would have taken Hibs through on the away goals rule.

He said: "The third goal was a killer. At 2-1 we were just a goal away from winning the tie, one great strike, one mis-kick, one deflected shot. To come off at half-time at 3-1 we felt a bit hard done by but I thought we moved the ball around well from midfield and we created chances which we never took.

"We talked at half-time about the next goal being crucial so it was frustrating that they scored it. It was hard to take but we went chasing the game a bit and they scored twice when we were trying to get back into the game. But I am proud of the players for the way they went chasing the game even if it meant we lost five as opposed to not having a go."

Dnipro's lead was stretched by two stunning strikes by substitute Oleksandr Melashchenko, the second of which, just to rub salt into the wounds, came some four minutes into injury time.

Hibs themselves had the ball in the net on two further occasions, Caldwell's effort rightly ruled offside but 18-year-old Fletcher's more questionably so.

And so Hibs were left wondering what might have been had those two shots from Scott Brown and Ivan Sproule during the first leg two weeks earlier hit the back of the net rather than the woodwork. Such memories will no doubt haunt Mowbray, his players and the near 1000 Hibs fans who travelled to Dnipropetrovsk in such hope for some time to come.

But for the time being, as Mowbray pointed out, the campaign is over and the focus has to turn to securing a similar adventure next season.

He said: "There were plenty of positives to take. They know the challenge in the SPL, they have managed to come back from negative results in the past so we are looking forward to getting back to business against Inverness on Sunday although we know it will be another tough game."

And Mowbray, who made a point of leaving the dressing-room after addressing his players to pay tribute to the Hibs support said: "The fans had a good time in this city, they were a credit to themselves, the football club and Scotland.

"The challenge for us is to make sure we get back in to Europe at the earliest possible opportunity so we have to continue doing what we do in the SPL, winning games, hopefully enjoy a good cup run and get back to playing in Europe. I'm sure the players enjoyed it despite the result."