Clean sheets and mean defence crucial for attack-minded Hibs - Monty

Happiness is a big fat zero. That is certainly true for a coach who, despite his reputation for expansive play and bold attacking strokes, takes just as much pleasure from dogged displays of defensive frugality.

Perhaps because there hasn’t always been much to write home about, when it comes to the business of keeping opponents away from the goalmouth, the grunt work being done by Nick Montgomery and his Hibs staff – the dreary detail that goes into cutting down opposition scoring opportunities – can easily be overlooked. Out on the pitches at East Mains, however, the hard graft continues.

Buoyed by another clean sheet in Saturday’s win over Livingston, their second shutout in three games but only their sixth in the new gaffer’s 15 games at the helm, the Hibs back four – plus goalkeeper David Marshall – were entitled to celebrate a victory built on discipline, solid positional sense and good risk management. While there has understandably been a lot of focus on Monty’s demands that his defenders adopt a passing build-up from deep inside their own box, the entire team is adapting to changes in how they play out of possession.

So, yes, Montgomery is still clearly frustrated by at least two of the four goals conceded at Celtic Park last midweek; he understands that there is very little any coach can do when a defender drops his assignment or switches off for a crucial split second. But he’s been encouraged by the general trend. And definitely loves it when a defensive plan comes together.

 “Yeah, I love to see a clean sheet,” he said, adding: “Ask the goalkeepers and centre-backs, they’ll tell you that it gives them just as much pleasure as anything in football, 100 per cent.

“To win games you have to score goals, so that gives you a lot of excitement when you’re creating chances and banging in the goals. But, for me, I get just as much excitement watching someone block a shot at the edge of the box or clear a header at the back post under pressure. Especially away at Livingston, when the wind is swirling, and the rain is coming in horizontal! It’s as important and as pleasing to me as scoring a goal.”

Having hit the net 21 times under Montgomery, Hibs are scoring at a fair enough clip to suggest they will be competing at the business end of the Scottish Premiership table – the race for European places, to be precise – as we head into this crucial pre-shutdown run of fixtures. But they’ve conceded 20 goals in that run. It’s not difficult to identify the problem.

The former Central Coast Mariners boss explained: “You base everything off having a good defensive structure – and we know we’ve got goals in the team so, if teams are going to score against us, we want them to work for it. We want it to be a good goal, not us making mistakes at the back.

“Ultimately, those mistakes will happen. But, if you can limit those, we have a great chance of winning games, just looking at the quality we have in the front third.

“We try to spend a lot of time through the week on all the elements of the game, all the different phases – attacking, defending, attacking transition, defending transition and set pieces. Those are really the five moments of the game, and we try to spend as much time as we can on them all throughout the week.

“I think there has been a big improvement in that over the time we’ve been here. But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you work on it, there’s that one moment where you lose your marker from a cross or a corner.

“We try to work on that – but that’s why football is so exciting, because it’s so unpredictable. We can work on something all week and concede the first cross tha comes in the box! That’s why you have to work so hard on the way you want to defend.

“We teach the players to work as a team. Attack as a team, defend as a team, so it’s never putting an onus on saying: ‘Oh, the defenders are responsible for us conceding goals …’ It starts from the front, the one or two strikers you play. If you start with them, you can really defend effectively.

“But there is definitely a solid discipline and structure around what we want to do defensively. I know it sounds really basic – but it’s important.”