Hibs boss makes 'momentum' admission was he looks to make best of unwanted break
Blank weekend gives Gray training ground opportunities
Hibs boss David Gray admits his team risk losing momentum after being denied the chance to build on their first league win of the season. But he’s determined to make the most of yet another free weekend – by fast-tracking recent signings into his plans.
Saturday’s 2-0 victory over St Johnstone at Easter Road, courtesy of goals from Mykola Kuharevich and Martin Boyle, saw Gray’s men turn in their most effective performance of the season. The new boss attributed part of that to organising a bounce game against Dundee United during the international break, as he gave players on their way back from injury – most notably Junior Hoilett and Elie Youan – vital game time ahead of their return to competitive play at the weekend.
While he’ll try to arrange another closed-doors friendly to help new signings Dwight Gale and Jack Iredale to build match sharpness, Gray admits that another blank square on the fixture list – courtesy of Premier Sports Cup ties impacting on the league programme – was far from ideal, saying: “We would have liked a game at the weekend; it would have been good to build on the momentum of the result to take that into training. But it also gives us time.
“We’re a new squad, the coaching staff and everyone, and it gives us extra time on the grass. We’ll make sure we’re getting as much into the players as we can.
“Ideally you would like it to be a working week with a game at the end of it every week, trying to get that rhythm and a way of working. We’ll do everything we can to make sure we’re getting enough into the boys from a training point of view and organise games.
“A free weekend coming up is not great, you would like to have had that. We can’t affect that now, so we have to make sure the boys are ready to go.”
Hibs will be following a stop-start programme for the next month-and-a-half, with the October international break again disrupting the domestic game. Gray’s men take on Rangers away on Sunday week, then host Motherwell on the Saturday before the shut-down puts the Scottish Premiership back into suspended animation for a fortnight.