Hibernian (A) | Pre-match: Derek McInnes

Derek McInnes has previewed our trip to Easter Road below.

It’s going to be a packed away end on Sunday. You must be looking forward to this one?

We’re always looking forward to it. We spoke about this run of fixtures, including a couple of tough away games before we played our three home games in a row.

I think it’s important that we take the confidence from the Aberdeen result.

I think it’s going to be a totally different type of game. Obviously Hibs will bounce into it, similar to ourselves. They were on the back of a derby win and they’ve really picked up recently, that’s no real surprise when you look at the calibre of player they’ve got.

But they’ve had a little change in shape which I think has really benefited them. And fair play to their staff who’ve managed to drag a few results out of them and get a bit of confidence.

So there’s no doubt that we’re going to expect a tough game. But equally, I think Hibs will expect a tough game from us and they need to feel that from us, something close to Thursday will hopefully help us get a positive result.

You’ve had to make a lot of forced changes this season, when you see a performance like Thursday, you probably wouldn’t want to make changes, but you’ve got so many games you may need to?

Yeah, I think we’re already without three really key players. Three players that would probably start. Stuart Findlay, arguably our best defender last year; Matty Kennedy, my most creative player at the start of the season and Marley Watkins, my top goalscorer from last season. I would love nothing more than to try and have less changes, to be honest. I think when you’ve got the festive period and there’s so many games, I think it’s five games in 14 days, it would be foolish not to utilise your squad. And we will. Every other club will utilise their squad. But obviously, I write the teamsheet, but the players actually pick themselves a lot of the time.

And when they play well and play at such a good level as we did against Aberdeen, then you don’t want to be making too many changes

How close is Kyle Magennis to forcing a start?

I think he is close. It’s a question we’ve asked of him and asked of the medical team. I think he’s certainly won’t have 90 minutes in him, I think that would be a bit of a stretch. But I think he would certainly have an hour in him, I would imagine. And it’s great to have that before the January window opens. It feels as if you’re getting a signing in through the door.

Obviously any team in this league is going to miss a player of Matty Kennedy’s quality, but Fraser Murray has really stepped up to the mark, hasn’t he?

Yeah, and do you know something that’s a credit to him. Because he’s been such a supportive teammate. He was a huge player for us, won Player of the Year when I first came in and helped us win the Championship.

He never quite maybe reached a level in that first year up, but listen, it wasn’t a team or a season we really showed a real attacking threat. It was all hands to the pump just to stay in the league. And then obviously Matty was really prominent for us.

Fraser can play in a couple of positions. So I think even when Matty comes back, it’s not to say it’s one or the other. But I think for him, it’s a testament to him that he trains at a level all the time, never lets his head go down. He catches the eye every day in training. I probably should have utilised him more in terms of bringing him off the bench more. But he’s been absolutely terrific. He gives us brilliant speed and brilliant creativity and his set-piece deliveries are second to none. So good on Fraser. He’s such a popular boy in the dressing room and it’s good to see him take a wee moment in the sun.

He’s been a very supportive squad player, teammate. But he’s been brilliant and really been pivotal in the last few games.

Is there any sort of update on Matty Kennedy or Marley Watkins?

Matty probably will miss Hibs. We are hoping he’ll maybe play one or two of the games at the start of January in the run of home games. Marley will miss Hibs and probably St Mirren. His best chance would maybe be Ross County.

He’s just got a little minor tear on his groin which will be a week to 10 days from when he did it against Motherwell. Doing the maths, Ross County would be touch and go for that one.

Would you expect any sort of early transfer movement in or out in January?

Out, who knows? Ideally we don’t want to lose people. We’ll just assess that as we go along.

There’s a couple of things we’d like to do coming in the way. We’ll probably have to be dependent on what goes out the way as well. There’s two or three lads who have flight risks in terms of teams looking at them.

We’ll have to deal with that. January is a month where you don’t really want to make too many changes. It’s also a month where you can make one or two that can help you reach your goals at the end of the season.