On-loan Coventry defender James McPake hopes to use his spell at Hibernian to get his career back on track.

The former Livingston man is set to make his debut for the Easter Road club when they take on Rangers at Ibrox tomorrow, and having found first-team opportunities hard to come by at the Ricoh Arena, he admits he is looking forward to getting regular playing time.

He said: "I need to be playing football and I have not had the opportunity to do that many times in the last year, so when the opportunity came up to play games here I had to take it.

"The manager (Pat Fenlon) had a few chats with me before the deal was done and he said he's looking for me to add some experience to the defence. I have played in Scotland before and also have experience of having some games in England too, so I know what is expected.

"I am not looking any further than the next three to four months and my main focus is helping Hibs up the league. I still have year to go on my contract at Coventry and hopefully if I get back to my form everything will take care of itself."

McPake admits that he was surprised to find Hibernian in such a lowly position in the SPL, because of the standard of player available to the club.

He continued: "When I looked at the table I was shocked even before I knew of the interest in me coming here.

"Now that I'm here and have seen the standard of training facilities and the players in training it is even more surprising. We have guys like Lee Griffiths, Garry O'Connor and Eoin Doyle who are all capable of scoring goals, we just need to stop losing silly goals at the other end.

"The manager has drilled it into us that we are losing too many soft goals, hopefully we can put an end to that and results will start to improve."

Although Hibernian have struggled in recent months, they travel to Ibrox on the back of two consecutive away victories after wins in Fife against Cowdenbeath and bottom-club Dunfermline, and McPake is looking forward to starting his spell at Hibs spell against the reigning Champions.

He concluded: "It's a great game to start with and one of the games I would have picked if given the choice - I am sure it'll be an exciting day," said the former Livingston man.

"I just hope we can go to Ibrox and put on a performance and hopefully pick up a result. The pressure is always on either of the Old Firm to win at home, but there's also pressure on ourselves to keep the team in the league."