Jair Tavares forced me into a Hibs U-turn as redemption reminds of my dark Dundee days – Tam McManus

I've got to hold my hands up here. In the summer, I was hoping against hope that Hibs would cut their losses on Jair Tavares and let him go because he had shown absolutely nothing in a green and white shirt.

But boy, was I wrong. And if most Hibs fans are honest, they’ll admit they were too. He was brought from Benfica on a long-term deal, and at no little cost, but Tavares looked like he’d walked into the wrong movie right from the start. “He’s an incredibly talented winger that’ll not only improve our first team squad, but is someone that has a lot of potential to develop into a top player in this league,” Lee Johnson said on the day the Portuguese kid signed.

But something clearly didn’t click between the manager at the time and the boy from Benfica. He hardly kicked a ball for Hibs under Johnson and stories began to emerge that Tavares was training away from the first team and with the kids.

I don’t know why. I’ve no idea if something happened between the pair of them, but it was blatantly obvious that the player had no future at the club for as long as Johnson was picking the team. And that must have been hell for a young boy in a strange country, learning a new culture and trying to adapt to a different way of playing the game.

He would still be training, so physically he’d have been fine but mentally, it would have been torture. Believe me, having been in that situation, I can vouch for that. I had a spell at Dundee where I was sent to play and train with the Under 18s and reserves, after having played more than 100 games for Hibs. Lee Wilkie, a Scotland international at the time, got the same treatment.

Our crime? Refusing to take a 65 per cent pay cut with Dundee locked out of the top flight. Alex Rae came in as