'I'm fairly sure there will be more movement' - Hibs chief hints at further transfer business

Club has already signed three new players and renewed Martin Boyle’s contract

Graeme Mathie spoke about Hibs' recruitment and hinted at further transfer activity

Hibs sporting director Graeme Mathie has hinted that the club could yet do more transfer business before the summer window closes on October 5.

The Easter Road side has already brought in striker Kevin Nisbet, midfielder Alex Gogic, and winger Drey Wright as well as handing forward Martin Boyle a new two-year deal but there could be more movement over the next few weeks.

Speaking on the Longbangers podcast, Mathie said: “Jack Ross and myself were discussing the possibility of signing five or six players to offset those that left the club.

“When the club moved into a different financial situation because of the coronavirus pandemic, we had to revisit that.

"We brought in our three top targets for the summer, in three areas we felt we needed to strengthen.

"They were three players we prioritised and really wanted to bring in. They were happy to come within the realms of the budget that we had available.

"There were another couple of bits of movement – Florian Kamberi leaving, which we expected because he had displayed a willingness to do that and Adam Jackson, who came to us wanting to move back down to England, which maybe wasn’t quite so expected but that’s just a normal summer, a normal transfer window.

"I’m fairly sure there will be some more movement between now and the end of the window as well.”

Mathie revealed that the club’s recruitment team, which he headed up before taking over from Head of Football Operations George Craig last year, has been working on identifying factors that make a good signing.

Mathie continued: “We received a lot of criticism about our recruitment last summer so that prompted us to look more closely at the signings we made and ask, “is there something that we can identify in all the players who have been successful?”

"Do players with families settle more easily? Are those that have played in Scotland or Britain before preferable to those that haven’t?

"We looked at around 15 or 20 different things and the one thing that came out as a determining factor was character, or mindset – but that’s one of the hardest things to judge before a player comes in.

"We do our due diligence, speak to those who have worked with them or shared a dressing room with them, but we tend to get quite similar responses – ‘Great guy, good trainer, brilliant character, great around the dressing room’ – but what we really want to know is how they cope in the last five minutes of a game when things are tough, or we need someone to dig the team out of a hole.

"That’s the type of character on the pitch that is quite hard to judge before they come in: how they’re going to react to our environment.”