Stubbs urges Hibs to take advantage of extra fans against St Johnstone

Hibernian head coach Alan Stubbs insists his players must use their fans' numerical superiority to their advantage when they face St Johnstone in the League Cup semi-final on Saturday.

The build-up to the Tynecastle clash has been dominated by a ticket row which has seen St Johnstone fans denied the extra 600 seats they had been promised after selling out the Roseburn Stand.

Hibs supporters will now occupy a full three stands of their city rivals' ground and Stubbs wants his players to give them something to shout about from the first whistle.

Stubbs said: "It's only an advantage if you can give them something to cheer about.

"It's not an advantage if you're not doing the right things, and the other team's on top.

"So people talk about pressure, I don't think it's pressure, I think it's excitement. I don't see how you can see playing in the semi-final as pressure.

"As a player you strive to be the best you can and get to as many major tournament finals as you can. It may be me but I don't look upon that as pressure."

Hibs lost semi-finals to Falkirk and Rangers last season, the latter over two legs in the play-offs.

"We need to win," Stubbs said. "That's what I've learned. It's never nice to get to the latter stage of any cup or the play-off system and lose.

"And what you feel at the time is one that you don't want to experience again. Come Saturday, at 4.50, whatever the time is going to be, or 5.20, I don't want to experience that feeling for my team. Not for me, for my team."

Stubbs, whose team beat Aberdeen and Dundee United in the earlier rounds, added: "We've been fortunate enough that we've come through a couple of games against Premiership opposition already, so that gives us an indication if we needed one that we can compete on our day.

"Saturday there's lots of different factors that you have to take into account.

"It won't be necessarily the best team that goes through on Saturday. That's the way semi-finals can sometimes go.

"We just want to make sure we perform to the best of our ability, then we've got a greater chance of going through, rather than by not performing.

"Semi-finals, you get there, and you can freeze. We've seen it before.

"We've got to a semi-final before and we performed, it just wasn't our day, and that can happen. We just need to make sure that Saturday is not one of those days."

Meanwhile, Stubbs revealed he could not stand in Dominique Malonga's way this week after the striker moved to Serie B side Pro Vercelli 1892 for an undisclosed fee.

"We told him how much we wanted him to stay," Stubbs said. "But I don't want any players who are not happy with not being in the team.

"Dom had a really good offer from Italy which – I've got to say even on Wednesday night he wasn't convinced he wanted to go.

"I had a chat with him, and it was a really difficult decision for him.

"But in the end, he chose – you know there was a two-and-a-half-year contract for him – and going back with his wife from Italy, and maybe that probably swung it his way."