REVOLVING CHORE
Johnson on his battle to keep everyone happy as injuries ease and squad grows
LEE JOHNSON admits seeing more Hibs stars come back from injury has given him a new headache.
The Easter Road boss has been hampered all season by an extensive injury list.
But now the likes of Kyle Magennis, Elias Melkersen, Rocky Bushiri and Demi Mitchell are fit again, he reckons his squad is too big and he will have to trim it back in January.
Johnson said: “When you get a lot of 20-25 year olds with experience, like we’ve got, it does become tricky to manage those guys.
“They have the experience and they have the desire and the hunger to play as well as being their agents’ golden pay cheque, so they are on the phone every five minutes.
“But they are probably not as mature as the senior players and sometimes feel victimised, so clear communication and having an open-door policy is really big going forward.
“When you have 27/28 players and maybe only eight or nine are regulars, you do the math. It’s not easy.
“You end up bored and not having the carrot at the end of the week and that hampers your progression.
“We need to reduce the squad and over the next couple of windows the aim is to do that – and increase the quality. But it is better to start from a position of being slightly swollen because we can use the budget well to move people out and bring others in.”
Johnson, meanwhile, hopes investing in a giant pitchside TV at their training centre, can help Hibs be fully prepared for the introduction of VAR.
The technology is due to be brought in after the World Cup break but could happen sooner and the Hibs boss said: “That’s quite a big adjustment halfway through the season and that’s a bit concerning.
“It’s a realm I don’t know, I haven’t experienced it before.
“How you coach, how you work, how you defend, block shots all come into consideration because the eye in the sky could nab you.
“We’re already working with VAR in training, if it’s an offside. We train with our coaching staff as linesmen and we let the move finish before deciding whether to bring it back for offside.
“We’ve got some cameras being set up over the next couple of weeks and my aim
i s to ask for a pitchside TV as well because then we can start using VAR in our training sessions to get used to it.
“At Bristol City I was one of the first in the EFL to have a big screen pitchside for training and it was fantastic, really aiding our retention of information.”
Johnson also revealed he is tagging Momodou Bojang in a bid to save him from himself.
The 21-year-old Gambian faces two weeks out after he picked up an injury doing a couple of road runs to keep himself in shape and Johnson is determined to make sure he and his team-mates don’t do any more unsanctioned overtime.
Johnson added: “You have to look at yourself and ask if you got the training wrong, have I left him out too long?
“You look at dehydration, the questionnaire the boys do, the supplements and whether they’ve taken them – then you find out what really happened.
“The players tell you, ‘Oh yeah, actually, I’ve done this and this’.
“We are tagging him now! It’s not just the young players, I nailed Paul Hanlon four or five
weeks ago.”