Hibs boss in star man sale surprise admission as Gray gets early jump on Easter Road summer squad revamp
Loan player options, contract talks and transfer targets on agenda during international break
Hibs are using the international break to begin reshaping their squad ahead of next season, according to David Gray. And the Easter Road boss is using the example of Kieron Bowie’s record sale in January – a deal that took Gray by surprise, he admits – as a reminder of the need to expect the unexpected once the summer window opens.
Hibs were busy in the mid-season market, acquiring three players on permanent transfers – Owen Elding, Ante Suto and Felix Passlack – as well as securing Dane Scarlett, Kai Andrews and Munashe Garananga on loan deals. The short shut-down in club football this week has given the football department a chance to look more closely at what happens next, according to the gaffer.
Gray said: “Yeah, I think you're spot on in terms of a window of opportunity, when there's no game at the weekend, to sort of look a little bit further forward. When I say a little bit further forward, the summer's going to come very quickly.
“As you've just touched on, we've got a few players that are playing that are on loan, what their situation is. And there's conversations going on all the time as you'd expect.
“And we certainly will and are continuing to look at the squad and future plan as early as you can because we're constantly chasing, trying to say: ‘Can we get everybody in on day one?’ That never happens, naturally.
“But the earlier you can do your business, it puts you in a better position, the quicker you can get your ideas over to new players in pre-season. Or even just retain players that you want to keep around the club, for whatever that looks like.
“And when there's no game at the weekend, sometimes that's an opportunity to sit down and probably talk about it in more depth.”
Although Hibs don’t expect the same sort of high turnover that has typified the most recent transfer windows, which saw Gray forced to clear out a whole swathe of players signed by predecessors, the former club captain is wary of predicting a quiet summer. And he admits that the sale of Bowie to Hellas Verona in a record-shattering £7 million package taught him a valuable lesson about making assumptions.
“Well, I think you never know because you always need to be ready for anything,” he said, adding: “Let's just say, that's something I've learned, is that you need to be proactive all the time.
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“We've got a lot of assets within our squad as well. Kieron Bowie is a brilliant example of that.
“If you'd asked me in November, did I think Kieron would move in January? Probably not.
“I thought he probably would have gone at the end of the season. But you have to have a plan in place that if that does come, and it's the right thing for everybody, that you have got an idea of what you're trying to achieve and making sure that you're not in a worse off place.
“I think there's a few players that did move on in January who would have been out of contract. Junior Hoilett would have been out of contract, Dylan Levitt, boys like that. They were in their last six months and had that opportunity to go and play going into their last six months.
“So we did do a bit of work in January. But I still expect there to be the loan players' conversations.
“But I think there is still a core of the group that are under contract, which is good because you're not starting afresh again with new ideas, with new players. You've got that core.
“And it's something we worked really hard on, probably this time last year, maybe a wee bit earlier, February, once the window closed, retaining players that were definitely going to be here next season. So that you start the pre-season in a strong place and you're just adding to what is a strong core.”