David Gray has urged his players to “ignore the noise” around Rangers when Hibs visit Ibrox in the Premier Sports Cup quarter-finals on Saturday.

Despite Rangers’ woeful start to the season, Gray expects a difficult game and says opposite number Russell Martin has experience in dealing with adversity.

“I think the big thing is to ignore the noise,” he said.

“Because one thing, this challenge and test is a real difficult one, we know that. The players they’ve got, an experienced manager, it will be a really difficult game.

“We need to be our absolute best, as we’ve done already and demonstrated going away in Europe this season and away performances have been very good.

“It needs to be that again. And all I can focus on is the things I can control, which is making sure I’ve got a game-plan, get the players ready, give them as much confidence and belief as possible to get into the next round of the cup.”

Hibs have only lost twice this season, both away from home in Europe, but have drawn three of their four Premiership games and Gray says there are improvements to come.

He added: “The level of performance has been exceptional at times, as I’ve seen from the players.

“The actual results haven’t always reflected the level of performance at times. There have been areas within it where we’ve let ourselves down and that’s areas we need to improve on.

“Whether that be conceding goals, timing the goals, but also being more clinical. We always go over every game to make sure we’re improving and learning from what we’ve been doing.”