Hibs boss told East Stand won't cut cash for players

And Lindsay claimed the resultant rise in the ground's capacity to 20,250, making it the "largest, fully covered UEFA compliant football stadium outside of Glasgow," could, in fact, help boost Hughes' spending power in future.

Revealing that much of the cost of the 6,400-seater stand, which should open a few weeks into next season, has already been ring-fenced, Lindsay said: "The manager's budget is completely different.

"There have been incremental improvements to that over the last five years, incremental growth and investment in the playing staff, both in terms of wages and transfer fees and we don't plan to deviate from that.

"We said we had ring-fenced cash for the new stand previously and that has not changed."

Lindsay believes the much-improved facilities and views the new stand will provide will help encourage more fans to come to Easter Road which, in time, will help provide more money to be spent improving the playing squad.

He said: "I'd like to think there will be a positive spiral, that the extra capacity will provide us with opportunities to grow revenue and supporter base. If we can do that it should mean we are able to support the manager at least at current levels and even increase it in the future."

While Hibs fans will be delighted to hear the final phase of the redevelopment of Easter Road, which began with the rebuilding of the South and Famous Five Stands in 1995, is about to be completed, visiting supporters will find tickets during reconstruction work hard to come by.

The 1,695 season ticket holders in the East Stand will be decanted to the South Stand for the duration of the work, meaning the visiting support, even for Hearts, Rangers and Celtic – who are due at Easter Road on Saturday, 3 April – will be restricted to just 1,400 seats given that segregation of the respective supports will take several hundred out of commission.

Lindsay said: "It's been done before when the West Stand was being built. We've had discussions with the police, there's already a clear understanding of how that will work and all parties are comfortable with it."

Manager John Hughes admitted that he has some fond memories of playing in front of the old East Stand and that he will be sad to see it go.

However he believes that the work will make Easter Road one of the most formidable in the country and said: "I will be sorry to see it go because I have got some great memories of playing games out on the Easter Road pitch in front of it. But the new stand is going to make the ground into one of the best venues to play football in Scotland.

"The work will take the capacity up to 22,000 and hopefully that will mean Easter Road is louder than ever. And I take my hat off to the board of directors because they have been working extremely hard to keep the club going in the right direction and the completion of the new stand will be a huge boost to everyone concerned with the club.

"My priority now is to make sure that we give the board and the supporters some results to shout about as well and get back to winning ways."

Meanwhile, Kevin McBride was due to take part in a bounce game against Partick Thistle today, if the pitch at the club's training ground had managed to recover from the sub zero temperatures overnight.

The surfaces at East Mains suffered hard frost as the mercury dropped to minus seven in some places and Hughes is considering starting his training sessions later than usual this week in a bid to allow them to thaw out.

McBride, who limped out of the game against Rangers a fortnight ago with a groin problem, is expected to be joined in the Hibs line-up by defender Kevin McCann. Hughes continued: "Kevin McBride is fit again and will hopefully be able to play in the bounce game depending on how the pitch is. He's been back in training, although he is still feeling it a bit so we want to get him out there in a game situation and see how he does."