David Gray challenged in-form Hibernian to keep hunting down the teams above them after they continued their “incredible” resurgence by moving into the top six for the first time this season, just four weeks after being bottom of the William Hill Premiership.
Hibs had a dire start to the campaign in which they won only one of their opening 14 league games, but they made it seven in a row unbeaten, and just one defeat in 10, with a 3-1 home win over Motherwell.
Hibs are now just two points behind Well, who have been in the top five for most of the season.
“It has been incredible, the turnaround, but we’ve given ourselves a real opportunity now to push on,” said manager Gray.
“Tasked before the game to try and get into that top six, we’ve still got 10 games to go before that’s settled (with the split).
“The next target, as always, is obviously to try and win the next game, but catch the team in front of you. That’s been something we’ve had to do a lot this season, because we were at the bottom of the league for a long time and the full focus was catching the team in front of us.”
Martin Boyle and Nectar Triantis put Gray’s men 2-0 up in the opening half hour and Boyle sealed the win with a penalty after Motherwell substitute Callum Slattery had pulled one back with a free-kick.
The only real blemish for Hibs was a suspected broken nose sustained by Nicky Cadden, the Premiership Player of the Month for December.
“First half I thought we were excellent, really controlled the game,” said Gray. “Second half, credit to Motherwell, I thought they made it difficult and we caused ourselves a few problems.”
Well had to pitch on-loan Norwich goalkeeper Archie Mair straight in for a debut after regular number one Aston Oxborough suffered a thumb injury in training and second choice Krisztian Hegyi was recalled by West Ham, leaving them without a keeper on the eve of the match.
Manager Stuart Kettlewell, who lamented “three individual errors” for Hibs’ goals, also revealed that Paul McGinn, who limped off in the first half, may have suffered a recurrence of the thigh injury that recently kept him out for three months.
“The last couple of days has been as challenging as it probably has been in several years of management for me,” he said.
“You find a situation where you’ve got two good goalkeepers and then you find yourself at a stage yesterday afternoon where you don’t have a goalkeeper to play the game.
“Fortunately, we managed to bring in Archie in, but we also had to bring Matty Connelly back from a loan at East Kilbride (to go on the bench), so we need to have a look at how long exactly we think Aston will be out.
“He gave it a go today. He tried to put himself out there, but it wasn’t going to happen with the nature of the injury, so we have to assess it.
“And the severity of the injuries that we seem to sustain, it rears its head yet again today. Paul knows his body and he feels it’s a recurrence of the injury that kept him out for several months. The extent of that, I don’t know, but that’s certainly how he feels.”
