Gray Praises Professional Performance At Livingston

David Gray praised his players’ professional performance as they beat Livingston in the Premier Sports Cup.

Goals from Thibault Klidjé and Josh Mulligan made sure Hibs progressed into the Quarter-Finals of the competition, after a very good display at the Home of the Set Fare Arena.

When speaking to Hibs TV after the match, Gray gave his thoughts on the players’ showing.

“It was very much job done. It was a really professional performance. We were very good at times. This is a difficult place to come, especially off the back of 120 minutes on Thursday night, an astroturf pitch, the heat – I’ve been here many times at the hotness and stickiness does play a part in the game. I thought we dealt with that very well.

“The changes and players coming in gave us that freshness and the level of our performance didn’t drop. This is the benefit of the squad we’ve got.

“All in all, a really good day’s work.”

Gray made six changes to his starting XI and gave three players their first starts for the Club. He detailed what his message was to them, and the rest of the team, before the match.

“The message was the first thing we needed to do here was win the fight. We knew it would come, and we knew how organised and aggressive Davie’s teams are. They always put you under pressure, especially here, and we dealt with that really well. We went a bit longer because of that, and when you’ve got boys like Thibault and Boyley running in behind it does cause a lot of problems.

“Defensively I thought we were excellent, restricted them to very few chances, got a clean sheet and we can all look forward to Thursday night.”

One of those who started for first game for Hibs was Thibault Klidjé. The Togo international impressed the Hibs faithful, bagging his first goal in the process.

“I’m delighted for Thibault,” said Gray. “Strikers want to score goals and the quicker you can score that first goal for a new club does your confidence a world of good.

“We’ve been patient with him, and we still will be. We don’t want to get carried away with him, we will take our time as he still has adjusting to do. Like I say, today will do his confidence a world of good; he was excellent.

“That is Scottish football right there, a physical challenge, and he came through that well, that’s the first step for him and his Hibs career.”