Hibernian suffered defeat to Motherwell on Tuesday evening, and David Gray believes his side “got what we deserved”.

The 2-0 loss halted the Leith side’s three-game unbeaten league run, and former captain Gray offered a brutal assessment of his team’s performance after the match.

“I thought we were not very unlike us. Started the game slowly, really poor in possession, a lot of unforced errors, a lot of misplaced passes, and then everything that could have went against us did, in that period as well, found herself 2-0 down, down to 10 men, and it was a really difficult task from there”

“We’ve been really poor; there wasn’t an individual that was a collective performance from us, which I’ve not seen for a while. We’ll need to look at that.”

Goals from Tawanda Maswanhise and Elijah Just had the home side in control, but the misery was compounded in the 34th minute after Grant Hanley’s red card. The Scottish international clipped the heels of Maswanhise, with the striker bearing down on goal, referee Duncan Nicolson had no choice but to dismiss the defender.

“No complaints about the red card because of the letter of the law. Now, if he’s on side, and he’s brought down, and you’re the last man, that’s a red card that’s outside the box. It’s an accidental trip. I think so, that is a red card.

“We signed up to VAR, and the technology, we can argue about that, whether we think it’s good enough. It is a factual decision that we’ve all signed up to. So I’m not going to argue about the offside.”

Gray offered some consolation to his players for their efforts in the second period, but ultimately their slow start had cost them the game.

“I think they did show character; they did show effort. They didn’t just roll over. I think that’s clear, especially because of the way we quickly found ourselves 2-0 down, down to ten men, the way Motherwell were playing on the front foot. It would have been easy to do that and feel sorry for yourself. I don’t think they did.

“I can’t fault the players for effort, for going right to the very end, but we certainly didn’t deserve to get back into the game, didn’t do enough to get back into the game.

Hibernian return to home league action against Celtic this weekend, and the manager believes his side can bounce back for the huge fixture.

“There’s nothing else for it. I think one thing we won’t do is just move on quickly. I know the Celtic games on Sunday, but at this moment in time, we’ll be in tomorrow, we’ll reflect on why we started the game the way we did and look at that.

“We’ve got enough time to get the players recovered and ready for their opportunity to try and put tonight’s result and performance right.”