Hibs second-half trend underpins need for 'mini pre season'

Doubly so when you consider Hibs taking a trip to Dubai was not universally popular among supporters - seemingly not everyone is convinced of the purported merits of warm weather training. Whether the camp yields tangible benefits in the second half of the season is a question that will remain unanswered for a while yet, but what wasn't up for debate was Nick Montgomery's feeling that the getaway was absolutely necessary.

Attempting to structure the camp in the same vein as a summer's close-season preparation suggests that the manager feels fitness must improve. Double sessions, perhaps even triple if rumours are to be believed, point to a real focus on driving up endurance levels. The 5-1 friendly defeat to Servette perhaps didn't look great on paper, but Montgomery deliberately sent his side into it fatigued to try and push them as far as possible.

"I didn't have a pre-season with the boys, so Dubai was like a mini pre-season," the manager told Hibs TV. "We have put a lot of work into the players and made sure they went into every session under fatigue. We wanted to push the lads and put some real work into them. The camp was positive for many reasons."

Hibs fans do not need reminding of the glut of late goals that have cost their team points this season, and but for repeated concessions in the closing stages of matches, there would be a significantly different feeling around the first half of the season.

READ MORE: Monty's 'three targets' for Hibs when season resumes

It was suggested, and acknowledged by Montgomery and the players earlier this season, that the team were being plagued by a mental block when it came to safely seeing out matches; that perhaps individuals were getting jittery and it was leading to errors. But there's a case to be made that Hibs were simply running out of steam as much as they were losing their nerve at crucial moments. The manager's style of play is demanding, with full-backs rarely given a breather, a midfield two tasked with covering vast swathes of the pitch, and a front line frequently interchanging positions.

Montgomery does not give much away in interviews, and if he harboured any concerns over fitness it was always unlikely he would discuss it publicly.  But it doesn't take much analysis to work out that gruelling sessions and the very mention of a 'mini pre-season' points to a manager who wants his team to be able to give more for a longer period. Montgomery correctly points out that a lack of options from the bench has also been detrimental as games wear on. Only once under his management has a substitute come on and scored - a Christian Doidge consolation at Celtic Park in a 4-1 defeat.

However, he will also be well aware that squad issues won't be entirely resolved in the January window. It remains clear that he will be required to extract more from what he has, albeit hopefully to a lesser extent than in previous months once signings are secured and long-term absentees are available once more.

READ MORE: Hibs transfer update on Adryan, Moore, Toure and Megwa

Nonetheless, a look at the granular minute-by-minute data - courtesy of StatsBomb - reveals a pattern. 

These expected goals race charts below are a useful tool for reviewing the flow of a match. They plot a team's cumulative xG (e.g. the quality of chances created) against time and can show the periods during which a team was in the ascendency, and vice-versa. In Hibs' case, there is a trend in which their xG tends to plateau as the second half progresses, and the opponent's increases.

The defeat at St Johnstone in December was widely regarded as the team's worst overall performance under Montgomery and it's notable that, according to StatsBomb, they did not create anything to push their xG up even the slightest amount after the hour mark.

Some of the most striking second-half drop-offs have come in games where Hibs took three points. For that, you do have to credit the players for digging in to grind out the odd result when feeling the strain, but as was made abundantly clear at McDiarmid Park, it's not something you get away with for very long.

Take the 1-0 win over Livingston in December. A Martin Boyle goal proved enough to take victory back to Easter Road, but it was far from plain sailing. After the interval, the Premiership's bottom side - who have scored just 12 times all season - took control of the game, and Hibs offered very little.

The above fixture came just days after a gruelling shift at Celtic Park, with Montgomery having limited scope to change personnel. Six days earlier, his side carved out a 2-0 win over Aberdeen at home, but again it's striking to look back and see how the flow of the match shifted so dramatically towards the Dons as time progressed.

Among the most galling results of the campaign to date were the late equalisers conceded against Ross County and St Mirren - at which point it felt that Hibs were sleepwalking into a thoroughly unwelcome habit.

The impact of new signings, and or, returning personnel on this trend should not be dismissed - Hibs will certainly benefit from having more bodies available - but it is not a significant leap to assert that one of the priority aims of the Dubai trip was to chip away at this drop-off late in games.

It has, unfortunately, happened a little too often to be explained away as heavy misfortune.