Mickey Weir: I'd have loved Premier Sports Cup format - but I see where Hibs boss is coming from
No offence to the club’s new manager – but I would have loved that as a player!
As a footballer you want to get into competitive games right away. You would never say as a player you’d rather play a friendly than a match where something is at stake. It gets the competitive juices flowing right away when typically it takes about three or four pre-season matches to get fully warmed up.
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Hide AdIf you get a couple of good results then it boasts the confidence early. I would think the majority of supporters would prefer competitive games as well.


It’s certainly changed days from when I was playing. It’s part of the overall trend across the sport where so much football is being played every year. There’s barely a break from it. You would never have got something like this format before. Instead, you’d be getting ready for a season by playing just six or seven friendlies. Going straight into competitive games for me would've been great.
That being said, I don’t have any problem with Johnson saying what he did. Managers will always have their viewpoints. He’s the one who sees his players every day and he'll know whether a couple of them were maybe undercooked and not fit enough to go into this situation. You're never going to please everybody.
I think it did work against us in this instance. I'm looking at the squad, the number of players we've brought in and the type of players we've brought in, and I reckon they've been caught out a little. It's hard coming into these expectations right away against opponents going full pelt.
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Hide AdAs for the administrative error in the match against Greenock Morton which sealed our fate, well, the type of thing that shouldn't be happening at a professional club. It was a mistake and it cost us. The supporters are rightly concerned because it shouldn't be happening at our football club, but we also need to move on now. We've got a big game on Saturday and there's no point dwelling on it.