An observation made by John Hughes shortly after his arrival at Easter Road was that in his time as Falkirk manager he felt Hibernian could be a bit of a 'soft touch'.  By that he meant that for all their fine football, if you pushed hard enough cracks would quickly appear - in effect, the side could all too often be easily bullied into submission.

Safe to say that as the Hibernian management team one of the first tasks he and Brian Rice worked on was to ensure that 'soft touch' was removed, and there is now a great deal of evidence that some success in that has been achieved. The last time Hibernian lost a league game was back in September, fair to say the manager was not pleased at the way his side capitulated in the warm sunshine at New Douglas Park. Such a performance has not been seen since.

The current nine-match undefeated run has not yet been based upon the type of football the manager strives to achieve from his side, although there has been some of that around - it has been achieved on the back of a tough, resilient core. There is now a work-ethic that his permeated throughout the squad so that no matter what the starting eleven might be Hibernian supporters are fairly sure they will see their side fight for every ball.

One of the players who has fully bought-in to the Hughes philosophy is Abdessalam Benjelloun. Benji could easily not even have been playing at Easter Road this season, he would admit himself that he had lost a little of the hunger and desire he had when first turning out in a Hibernian shirt. That changed when he got together with John Hughes, and the change was once more reflected by the player himself in talking to Hibernian TV this week: "Having gone nine games now without losing fills the side with confidence, we can relax more in our minds because we are doing well. We need to keep our focus and keep training hard - if we work hard as we are doing then it helps, because we can get a result even when we do not play such good football.

"In every game we fight for every ball - we are physically stronger now that we were in the past.  When our technique and passing game does not work then we have to fight for every ball, and if we do that not many teams will beat Hibernian this year."

Benji recognises as everyone does that at some point Hibernian's current run will end - he is of the view however that even when that happens this side have the strength and desire to immediately bounce back: "Every team in the league now knows that Hibernian can play good football, so other managers might ask their players to work harder against us, to dominate us in games. We saw this I think against St Mirren and Hearts, and then again on Saturday against Falkirk. Every game now I think could be like the Falkirk and St Mirren games, so we have to fight against that and be physically ready for that.

"It was the case in the past that any time a strong physical team played against us they felt confident, they felt we were soft - but this year we have shown that we can play good football but with a physical edge to our game, we will fight for each other, for every ball and we remain focussed in every game."

The Moroccan international is looking forward to facing Motherwell this week, confessing that the easiest game he has played this season was the win over the Fir Park side in September. He acknowledges however that the ease in which Hibernian brushed aside Motherwell that day could work against the side this week: "We played very well against Motherwell the last time - for me it was the easiest game this season, but they will come to us this week with a new mentality I feel. They know they have lost only once in the league this year and that was against us, they will remember that game and be much more determined this time.

"It is important for us that we win this game and keep our run going, and I hope also that the stadium will be full on Saturday. I really hope the fans come to watch, because before we would play good one game, bad the next and the stadium was full. We need the fans now to come and help us to win - especially at Easter Road."

Abdessalam Benjelloun features now on Hibernian TV, joined today by David Wotherspoon - exclusive video interviews are available daily only on Hibernian TV.