It will all have been painfully unfamiliar to Marvin Ekpiteta, but the story of his difficult first few weeks in the Scottish Premiership has been told a hundred times over.

Plucked from England's League Two as a free agent after leaving Blackpool, the 28-year-old centre-back made a wobbly start to life at Hibs. A costly stray backpass at St Mirren on opening day, two gruelling afternoons up against a rampant Celtic, Ekpiteta admitted to being rocked by his new surroundings.

And that's why it meant so much when David Gray pulled him aside to emphasise that he retained the head coach's full faith. "It was massive because nobody had ever done that with me before," said the defender. "He definitely gave me that extra confidence that he knows I can do it, he believes in me. And then just to be able to repay him really for still having faith in me and still playing me, it was massive."

For his part, Gray was more concerned with his defensive unit making unforced errors than any one individual, but he knew from experience the value in having a word in Ekpiteta's ear. It appears to have paid off, with the Englishman showing signs of steady week-on-week improvement, improvement that has been reflected across the board.

"I've been there a million times when you make mistakes, nobody does it on purpose," said Gray ahead of Saturday's visit of Motherwell to the capital. "One thing I've been quite consistent with is, from a defensive point of view, a lot of the mistakes were self-inflicted. It wasn't as if it was a structural thing. We were, as a unit, really poor. It was individual errors and we were getting punished for them all the time. I've not lost any faith in any of them as defenders, why they were brought to the club and their ability to defend the box, especially Marv.

"You've seen that on numerous occasions, how well he does defend the box. We know we had to cut out the mistakes but the last thing you want to do is take someone straight back out of the team who's just joined the club and demoralise them, but at the same time understand that there is players ready and waiting to go as well. So it's about that, putting trust in the players, making sure they know exactly what's expected of them but also giving them the confidence to be able to perform because that's where they get judged at the end of the day."

Gray, of course, wasn't a newcomer to Scottish football when he joined Hibs from Burton Albion in 2014, but he's seen enough players arrive from south of the border and be caught off-guard by the unique demands of Scottish football, and the incessant demands that come with life at Easter Road. Nothing in the lower English leagues, for example, compares with the stylistic whiplash that can strike between facing off against a Champions League side in Celtic one week, and then being expected to dominate a few days later against a completely different level of opposition. Gray insists he knew the likes of Ekpiteta simply needed time to adjust.

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"I've been here ten years now and seen players come up from down south," said the Hibs head coach. It can take a bit of time, I'm sure if you asked Joe Newell or Christian Doidge about when they first joined, I'm sure they would say the same. There is an expectation of not really knowing what the Scottish game is about. When you're down south - and I've played down there - you get caught up in what you're doing, and up in Scotland it's all Rangers and Celtic until you actually come up, experience it, and understand the demands and expectations of a club like Hibs - the challenges that come and the standard itself. One week you've got Celtic, a team playing in the Champions League against Borussia Dortmund. You need to be able to come up and test yourself against that and then the challenge quickly changes to where all the pressure and expectation is on you to win.

"Getting to grips with that is something the players are starting to develop now, which is good, from playing more games. But I also think you've seen playing Celtic as early as they did back-to-back probably knocked a bit of confidence in certain individuals and as a group we were probably knocked of a bit of confidence, but I think there was a big improvement going into Ibrox. As a coach, it's easy to stand and say 'we need to do this', and you can try and prepare the players for what to expect, but there's no better feeling than actually playing in the games, experiencing it and understanding it."