Marink Reedijk is discovering that life doesn’t just come at you fast in Scottish football, it is capable of hitting you like a runaway train.Just two games into his tenure at Hibernian, the 35-year-old Dutchman is already facing a week which could go a long way to defining his credibility as the bright new managerial talent the club believe they have appointed.For many of those supporters who trooped out of Easter Road last Saturday muttering the ‘R’ word among themselves, the jury is very much still out.Relegation is not something any of them would have considered a serious threat before the start of the season but the 2-1 defeat at the hands of Falkirk, their first top-flight home loss to the Bairns in 20 years, sent Hibs to the bottom of the Premiership table and set alarm bells ringing.On the back of losing 1-0 at Dundee United the previous week in Reedijk’s first game in charge, it added up to a wretched start for the man whose emergence as successor to the sacked David Gray came out of left field last month.Things aren’t about to get any easier for Reedijk with three games in the next eight days which have the potential to either get the Hibs fans firmly onside or place him under severe pressure even this early in his time in the role.Today’s visit of champions Celtic might be considered something of a free pass, with expectations understandably low that Hibs will prove capable of upsetting the champions who have rediscovered their domestic mojo in emphatic fashion since the international break. Marink Reedijk is still looking for his first win as Hibs manager after two defeatsThat said, Reedijk certainly won’t – and definitely can’t – write off an opportunity for the kind of statement victory which would go a long way to providing him with significant breathing space as he finds his way in his new surroundings.Whatever the outcome against Celtic, however, his next two games will carry huge weight. On Wednesday night, Hibs travel to Paisley to face St Mirren. It’s the kind of fixture Reedijk needs to start winning in order to build the momentum required to take his team back towards the top half of the table.Then there is the little matter of another trip along the M8 next Sunday, this time to Hampden for a seismic Premier Sports Cup semi-final against Hearts.Wouter Vrancken, another previously unheralded name on these shores before Hearts plucked him from Belgian football to become their new head coach in the summer, saw his approval ratings with the club’s support skyrocket when he won his first Edinburgh derby with a 3-1 success at Easter Road last month.If Reedijk can do the same, especially at the national stadium where Hibs have lost all four of their previous meetings with their city rivals, he would garner similar levels of appreciation from the punters as well as the chance to lift silverware in December’s final.On current form, however, it’s far easier to envisage Hibs losing all three of those games than it is to make a case for them emerging from them with Reedijk’s reputation enhanced. That worst-case scenario of losing his first five games in charge would see him entering Wilfried Nancy territory, the kind of horrendous run which hobbled the Frenchman after his surprise appointment as Celtic boss last season and saw him sacked after just eight matches and 33 days in charge.Hibs’ executive chairman Ian Gordon and sporting director Malky Mackay are likely to exercise far greater patience with Reedijk who convinced both of them during the recruitment process that he can replicate the dramatic success he enjoyed in his previous job at SK Beveren.It took Reedijk, who describes his football philosophy as demanding his teams are ‘assertive, brave, intense and committed’, some time to get his ideas across at the East Flanders club. Struggling Hibs haven’t won a home league game in six monthsIn 2024-25, his first season in charge, they won just two and lost four of their first 10 games in Belgium’s second-tier Challenger Pro League. Reedijk’s impact gradually began to be felt, however, and they lost just twice more in the rest of a campaign which saw them finish fourth in the table before losing out in the first round of the promotion play-offs.It laid the platform for last season’s historic invincible title win as Reedijk guided Beveren into the top flight. They finished 21 points clear at the top of the table, winning 28 and drawing four of their 32 games, and became the first team to remain undefeated in a professional Belgian league season since 1934.Reedijk’s snap decision to quit Beveren in the wake of that triumph raised eyebrows and appeared rash as the weeks ticked by and no fresh opportunity came his way.‘When you take on a role, you have to be 100 percent committed to it and, at that moment, I wasn’t,’ he explained shortly before Hibs made their move for him.‘I don’t think I’m too demanding,’ he added, ‘but there has to be someone who’s willing to give my profile a chance. I’m not a former player and I’m still young, so a club would have to fully commit to that’.There’s certainly a risk factor for Hibs in going all-in on a relatively inexperienced manager as they attempt to bring a halt to what has become a revolving door situation at Easter Road. Reedijk is their seventh manager in less than eight years since Neil Lennon left in January 2019 to be followed by Paul Heckingbottom, Jack Ross, Shaun Maloney, Lee Johnson, Nick Montgomery and Gray.The decision to dismiss club legend Gray last month raised few objections among the Hibs support, a majority of whom had reluctantly reached the conclusion his time was up.Yet it is worth noting the standards set by the 2016 Scottish Cup winning icon during his time in charge – securing third and fifth place Premiership finishes in his two full seasons and back to back European spots. Gray was just six minutes away from another slice of club history when Hibs led Gent 2-1 going into the closing stages of their Conference League play-off tie in August, only for a late collapse which saw them lose 3-2 and miss out on group or league phase European football for the first time ever.After putting the squad through what he called ‘pre-season on steroids’ in a warm weather training camp in La Manga during the international break, Reedijk’s implementation of changes in both formation and tactics has proved challenging for the Hibs players in his first two games.A lengthy injury list hasn’t helped but they will need to adapt quickly if their current difficulties are not to descend into a full-blown crisis.Hibs’ problems stretch beyond the technical area and the pitch. There are question marks over the club’s player recruitment, while the current ban on their Block Seven ultras group is just one symptom of wider discord among the supporter base.As ever in football, the buck tends to stop at the manager’s door and it is Reedijk’s task to try and change the debilitating narrative enveloping a club who haven’t won a league game at home in over six months.The next eight days should paint a far clearer picture of whether he is the right man for the job.