Murray hopes Euro exit lets Hibs focus on the battle for third place

Ian Murray has had to deal with a double dose of disappointment at the start of this season. Not only did the defender, along with his team-mates, endure the setback of European elimination, but he is suspended for the first two league matches.

This is par for the course for Murray. "It's the third season in a row," he pointed out yesterday. But granted time away from the fevered preparation work for tomorrow's league opener with Motherwell, perhaps Murray is the best man to cast an eye over the coming campaign and contemplate Hibs' prospects.

After all, he is a fan of the Easter Road side. Indulging in idle talk about what their club will and will not do in the months ahead is just what fans do on the season's eve.

Although now banned, Murray sampled the mood in the camp in the two recent matches with Maribor, which saw Hibs crash out of Europe. This proved difficult to bear given how hard John Hughes' side had striven to achieve qualification, squeezing into fourth place on the final day of last season.

This struggle - Hibs won only four times in the league after January - has meant optimism among the fans is a little milder than when compared to this time last year. Back then Hughes' squad looked well equipped to mount not just a challenge for third spot, but also make a tilt at splitting the Old Firm. Few had reason to revise this opinion in the opening months of the campaign.

While Hibs began strongly, their form faded dramatically after Christmas and those seeking some reassurance that the summer break had helped flush this worrying decline from the system were not given encouragement when their side lost 6-2 on aggregate to Maribor, and were beaten by Carlisle in a friendly.

"We always knew it would be difficult to progress against them (Maribor]," said Murray. "Obviously it was disappointing but the plus side is we can concentrate on the league, and hopefully get off to a start like we did last season."

Had Hibs been able to match their pre-Christmas form after the festive period then they might have given Rangers something to worry about as the Ibrox side closed in on the championship. But in the end Hibs were simply grateful to secure a European place, with a 2-0 win at Dundee United on the final day.

With a squad that is largely the same, Murray is eyeing an improvement. He agrees that the retention of the potent front three of Anthony Stokes, Derek Riordan and Colin Nish, who gathered over 50 goals between them last season, means scoring should not be the problem.

"No doubt we will rely heavily on them again," he said. "We are that type of team. Even if we are not playing particularly well we know we have a couple of goals in us each game. I think there were only a couple of games last season when we did not score.Battling it out for third will be the usual suspects - ourselves, Motherwell Hearts, Dundee United and Aberdeen," he added.

"(But] We will need to try and maintain our challenge more. Last season we got off to a great start and were unstoppable for a while. But after Christmas we just did not perform. If we can get off to a good start again and put points on the board then we have a great chance of getting third place."

Murray argues that their struggles in the final months of last season were not helped by ill-fortune. He has a point, to an extent. Last-minute goals cursed them after the split, when points were thrown away against both Hearts and Celtic.

"Things did not go for us," he said. But he conceded that the opposite was true at the start. "There were games at the beginning of the season which we did win, when the result perhaps flattered us a bit. We were getting that little break. I think we conceded about six penalties towards the end of the season which we just were not giving away at the start of the season, and which cost us a lot of points."

The return of Sol Bamba, after his recent disciplinary scrape with the club, will help shore up the defence in theory. But Maribor did score three times at Easter Road in the second leg after he was brought into the side after missing the first match. Murray reports that the defender was welcomed back, even if his one-man protest at being denied a longer break after the World Cup was felt to be ill-advised within the Easter Road dressing-room.

"He should report back on time regardless of what he might have thought about it," said Murray. "It's your job at the end of the day - there's no job in the world where you can decide when to come back. The gaffer dealt with him accordingly. But we all know and Sol knows, and the management knows and the fans know, that he is definitely an asset to us when he is on his game.

"He gives us presence at the back and adds a bit of speed. Maybe he was just disappointed that he did not play in the World Cup, which didn't improve his chances of moving on. Maybe that was the reason he was a little bit down.

"He's a good player on his day, when he knuckles down and gets his head right," added Murray. "And we need him. Sol knows that if he wants to move on to greater things then he has to play every week for Hibs, and play well. It's up to Sol really."