Hibs have Bournemouth friendly request booted out despite Lee Johnson heat bomb concerns

Temperatures are forecast to hit 40C by kick off time in Marbella on Thursday.

Bournemouth have knocked back a request from Hibs to move their scheduled friendly on Thursday back amid concerns over an impending heat bomb hitting Marbella.

Temperatures are forecast to touch 40C by the 6pm kick off time as a mass of hot air blasts in from Africa triggering a red weather alert for holidaymakers. Lee Johnson revealed he asked Bournemouth to move the game to a later kick off when temperatures started to dip. But that request has been rejected and Johnson is now considering other changes to the format to combat the heat - including splitting the 90 minutes into three periods.

He said: “I asked them if they’d move it to a later time and they didn’t want to. Maybe they’ll realise how hot it is going to be at that point when they get there. Potentially we might do a 3x30minute type game, there will definitely be stoppages after 22 and a half minutes for water.

“And it might mean rather than play 60-70minutes with one eleven, I share it about and we go with two 45s. Again, it’s about taking in all the information. We have a couple of lads getting scans so we’ll wait until we get those back and see where we are.”

Hibs have been in southern Spain for a warm-weather training camp for six days and beat FC Europa of Gibraltar 2-0 in a friendly on Saturday in draining temperatures of just over 30C. But that’s set to ramp up significantly in the coming days.

Johnson said: “We have to deal with different environments. As a footballer playing in the SPFL and Europe you have to deal with all the elements.

“I remember last year being at Ross County away, freezing, the wind coming in. You have to deal with that. But you also have to be robust enough to deal with heat.

“My sport scientist Colin Clancy told me 10 of them went through four litres of water in an hour and a half, so that shows you how much it is coming out of them as well. I think what we’re trying to do now is replicate our game flow as much as we can.

“So the way we work with Matchday -1, -2, -3 and -4 in a normal season, we’re trying to get the new players into a rhythm of that. So with this heat is you’ll reduce the load in a bid to keep the intensity the same.

“These are the factors we are having to weigh up when we meet every morning, the mileage, the accels, the decels during the day. We’re doing two sessions on the pitch and we’re doing a strength session.

“And we’re having to be be really fluid and flexible. There’s a lot of information that comes in from the players as well, they do questionnaires every day, we get their heart rate and GPS data.

“And also it’s just getting a feel, isn’t it. You talk to the lads, you look in their eyes. So every bit of information will feed into what we do next.”

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