Hibs’ defender Darren McGregor says that he was happy to do his talking ‘on the pitch’ after the ‘hot air’ spoken ahead of last night’s derby by Craig Levein.
Two top quality goals from Scott Allan and Jamie MacLaren coupled with a clean sheet at the other end was the perfect answer to Levein’s ‘natural order’ comments following Hearts’ Scottish Cup victory.
The popular defender was quick to praise his team mates and insisted that the players and management are now looking to kick on and overtake Aberdeen and Rangers at the top of the table.
Many fans thought that losing top scorers Anthony Stokes then Simon Murray during the January window would hamper the progress but the opposite has happened thanks to top quality loan signings Jamie MacLaren and Flo Kamberi.
After the game McGregor told Cliff Pike of Hibernian TV: “Tremendous. Coming into this game there was a lot of off-field antics going on but we just concentrated on the game.
“A lot of things were said but to me it was just hot air and you do your talking on the park and today I thought we did that. 12 points clear with a game in hand, we are content with that.
“All that did was to stoke the flames and make us more motivated and it turned the crowd up as well and makes the fans more motivated too.
“It was tremendous from start to finish and we thoroughly deserved our 2-0 victory.
“When you have a trio in front of you like John (McGinn), Dylan (McGeouch) and Scott (Allan) you just give them the ball and that eases the pressure on ourselves.
“It shows the strength in depth we have with Steven Whittaker, Marvin Bartley and Danny Swanson coming on.
“Jamie (MacLaren) and Flo (Kamberi) have added tremendously well to the squad. Sometimes you can get signing in January that can be a bit of a hit or miss but these two acquisitions have helped us massively.
“The big man (Kyle Lafferty) has quality and he is an international and played in European championships so I definitely wasn’t going to get my own way for the 90 minutes but every time me, Paul (Hanlon) and Efe (Ambrose) have come up against him we have handled him very well.
“We know that Aberdeen and Rangers are really good teams but we have aspirations to finish higher. we’ve proven that we can beat them so why should we set the bar at fourth. At the same time we don’t want to get above our station. We know that we have hard games ahead.
John graduated from Telford College in 2010 with an HNC in Practical Journalism and since then he worked for the North Edinburgh News, The Southern Reporter, the Irish News Review and The Edinburgh Reporter. In addition he has been published in the Edinburgh Evening News and the Hibernian FC Programme.
