Nick Montgomery’s Friday chinwag with the media felt an awful lot like his team at the moment: dominated by attackers.

Martin Boyle had his name in lights a dramatic double which returned Hibs to familiar cup semi-final surroundings in midweek, but there’s a palpable excitement down Leith way about one Dylan Vente. You’ll have seen by now the quite startling statistic that the Dutch marksman’s last five shots have found the back of the net, a rate of efficiency that will quickly endear you to any fanbase on the planet.

“I think it was six shots, five goals,” said his manager, obviously keen to keep the player’s ego from inflating at the same exponential rate as his goal tally. Still, though, there are few things to make a new manager’s early weeks in a job more comfortable than a forward who just can’t help but score every time the opportunity presents itself.

This remarkable run will obviously end at some point, but the goals themselves should keep on coming if Hibs can maintain the creative streak that has quickly changed the mood music around Easter Road. Montgomery was only appointed 18 days ago, but it has taken him no time at all to summon a tune from a wealth of attacking options. And yet he was humble enough to admit that there are elements to Vente’s game he, or anyone else, cannot teach – you either have it, or you don’t.

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“You can coach strikers, and I’ve played with some very good ones, but ultimately you can’t coach them where to be in the box when the ball arrives,” said Montgomery. “For me that’s a knack and Dylan has it. He always finds space in the box. His finish against St Mirren, he spins and hits it with his left. To be both-footed and have ability to find space in the box, it’s nice to have those players.”

Montgomery’s approach thus far has largely been about finding Vente and others in those spaces. A front four featuring two strikers and two out-and-out wingers has already been the subject of much excited discussion, and so far, it is proving highly effective. Boyle has six goals, Vente has five, Elie Youan sits on four, while Adam Le Fondre and Christian Doidge have contributed three apiece.

I’ve already seen Hibs fans pondering just how the club managed to poach Vente for £700,000. It’s perhaps not a pittance for Scottish Premiership clubs, but it feels below the going rate for forwards across Europe. Montgomery certainly sounded grateful.

“It was good, astute business by the club,” he said. “He’s a player who has belief he can score every time he steps on the field, and if you have three of them – with Doidgey and Le Fondre, one of the best of his generation – it’s nice to have those options. Dylan’s been fantastic – he’s very low maintenance, listens and does what we ask him to do. He’s in the right place at the right time and the composure in his finishing is high level.”

Montgomery’s praise for Le Fondre was certainly eye-catching, putting the 36-year-old up there with the best he’s seen. At that age, he may not play every week, but his spatial awareness and game intelligence feels like the ideal foil for Vente at the moment, as evidenced by the delightful flick which set up last week’s second goal against St Mirren.

But while all is rosy at the sharp end, Montgomery knows there’s some work to do at the back. Hibs have conceded twice in two of his three matches, and that’s something, if left unsolved, that could become an issue when his frontline has an off day. He revealed defensive solidity is being worked on in training, but as he has done previously, emphasised that his free-scoring, plaudit-grabbing attackers have as much responsibility in that regard as those at the back.

“We attack as a team, defend as a team,” was a point made more than once on Friday, with the insistence that the forward players are satisfying his demands in that regard. Cutting out soft goals appears to have been a focal point of the week’s training, especially with some monumental tests looming in the near future.

After Dundee on Saturday, Hibs will face Hearts, Rangers and Celtic consecutively either side of the international break. Those will clearly be the biggest tests of whether Hibs’ improvement in front of goal can be matched by defensive solidity. Montgomery will be all-too aware, and excited, by the fact that if they can perform at both ends of the pitch, Hibs will be a formidable prospect.

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He does give the impression of being a manager who would settle for simply outscoring the opponent, though. “If football was a perfect sport, no goals would be conceded,” is not the mantra of a man satisfied by pragmatic football, is it? Quite what that will yield in the long run remains to be seen, but it feels unlikely to be dull.

It would take some effort to strip the entertainment from that forward line, anyway, so Montgomery might as well maximise it. The best Hibs teams have always had a caution to the wind persona, and this one looks increasingly likely to be cut from that cavalier cloth.