The Hibs midfield shuffle - squeezing new boy into over-sized group in need of cull

Pick your three best central midfielders and tell them to make it work. Sounds like a simple enough plan, right? Especially when a couple of the TEN candidates on the books are so far out of the picture that they’d need binoculars just to SEE the substitutes’ bench.

But there’s a reason David Gray is so keen to make Luke McCowan a Hibs player. Reasons, actually.

First, he’s exactly the sort of player – a homegrown talent in his prime, already doing the business in Scotland’s elite division – Hibs should be looking to attract as a matter of course. Given time, Gray would like to make this his modus operandi when it comes to targeting talent, budget permitting.

Second, he is likely to add something instant, impactful and important to an area of the park where Hibs have struggled to find the right blend. A glance down at the mix ‘n’ match selection, reflected in starts, substitutes and playing minutes, by Gray in the campaign to date speaks to a gaffer not yet certain of his strongest combination in that crucial area of the park.

Joe Newell appears to be a guaranteed starter when it matters, the club captain in the first XI almost as a matter of course. But the skipper has been paired up with a couple of different partners – and hasn’t always seen the same face playing in the No. 10 role in Gray’s favoured 4-2-3-1 formation.

There are a handful of paper players, if you’ll pardon the expression, who haven’t contributed a single minute. Jake Doyle-Hayes through injury. Nohan Kenneh and Allan Delferriere because they’re not in Gray’s plans.

And one or two of the in-betweeners, technically first-team squad members but not first-choice picks except in extremis, haven’t done themselves any favours. The central pairing of Luke Amos and Dylan Levitt, given the nod to start against Kelty, isn’t one we’re likely to see again.

Should the Hibs board agree to shell out in excess of £750,000 for McCowan, they’ll obviously be looking to reduce numbers. And cast off some excess baggage.

So let’s take a look at the potential group of players to be shuffled, ranked and, in some cases, discarded before Friday is out. Note: Could be overtaken by events within an hour of publication ... don’t you just love the final week of the window?