Kamberi says Hibs will attack in Greece

Florian Kamberi has insisted Hibs won’t travel to Greece next week simply looking to hold on to what they’ve got after his dramatic lastminute winner threw the Europa League tie with Asteras Tripolis wide open.

The Easter Road side looked as if they were destined to crash out of the competition at this second qualifying round stage when Asteras defender Georgios Kyriakopoulos struck twice in the first half.

But in a stunning secondhalf fightback, Neil Lennon’s players hauled themselves level through Efe Ambrose and David Gray before Kamberi claimed his fourth goal of the campaign to send Hibs into the return leg next Thursday with a slender but hugely important 3-2 lead.

There’s little doubt Hibs will be up against it in the Theodoros Kolokotronis Stadium, where Asteras have lost just 16 of 107 league games during the last seven years.

However, Kamberi believes there is little point in Hibs going there looking simply to hold out for the draw which would send them through to a probable clash with Norwegian side Molde, who hold a 3-0 advantage over FK Laci after the first leg of their tie.

“I don’t think we will go there to play defensively for 90 minutes,” he said. “I don’t think we will play for the draw or play on the counter, we will not go there with that mindset.

“We’ll be thinking ‘it’s 0-0 and we want to win this game’. We are a winning team and we always want to win games. Of course we go there to win.”

Although Asteras have a greater European pedigree in recent years, twice reaching the group stages of the competition, Kamberi believes Hibs were the better team on the night.

He said: “It was an unbelievable win for us, to go through 90 minutes like that in a European qualification game was just amazing. After going 2-0 down it was definitely not easy to come out for the second half. But we played really well after that, good movement and getting three goals. I actually think we could have scored more. Getting the win was important and now we have to rest up and be ready for the second leg.”