Lee Johnson gives update on Aiden McGeady injury and reveals bounce game plan

Hibs have organised a bounce game to keep the Easter Road squad ticking over during next week’s free weekend – but manager Lee Johnson fears he has lost Aiden McGeady for a while after the winger was forced off with an injury in the first half of Saturday’s 2-0 victory over Kilmarnock.

The 36-year-old pulled up while chasing a ball and was replaced ten minutes before half-time by Matthew Hoppe, who scored the second goal. Speaking afterwards, his manager admitted the prognosis was not particularly positive.

“He’s never done his hamstring before but he felt it pop quite badly, he said it’s a bad one. It’s tough; we have had no luck with our forwards,” Johnson said ruefully after the final whistle.

“He was excellent in the first half. He set up the goal. We talked a lot before the game about him being higher up the pitch, because you know what he can produce there. We looked at the data, we looked at Sunderland and here, and the team and him needed to get ten yards higher. He did that really well and was influential up until the injury.”

Aiden McGeady looks to the sky after suffering a hamstring injury

Kevin Nisbet also missed the game after being rated 50:50 and Lewis Stevenson was named on the bench despite nursing a knock. Long-term absentees Martin Boyle and Rocky Bushiri were sidelined as was Mykola Kukharevych, who is due back soon.

"We have a closed-doors game on Friday, so we’ll be able to get a lot of work into Nizzy and Jake Doyle-Hayes, and Kyle Magennis will get some more as well,” Johnson explained.

“Mykola will be back for Livingston but with Nizzy I almost felt I didn’t want the option [of bringing him on against Killie], and if he was on the bench he would probably have scored a couple with the chances we had.

“Lewis would have been a bit of a risk as well, so there is always that counter-balance, but we won the game 2-0 and Nizzy and Myko could be like new signings for us by the time they come back.”

The bounce game will be an opportunity for some of the other fringe players to get gametime such as Jair Tavares and Lewis Miller, who came off the bench on Saturday, and the youngsters supplementing the squad.