Aaron Hickey: Brentford & Scotland defender’s long-awaited return

Getting by way of such a spell out takes nice psychological power, angle, and endurance.

And Craig Levein, who labored with Hickey at Hearts, has pleaded for the latter. He has completely little doubt, nonetheless, that the lad he had at Tynecastle as an adolescent has the resilience to return again higher than ever.

One story from the Scottish Cup closing defeat to Celtic in 2019 provides a superb perception into how unfazed Hickey, simply 16 on the time, was by the scale of the problem.

“We have been on the bus by way of to Glasgow,” Levein recalled, “and anyone introduced it to my consideration that I ought to check out the again of the bus. So I walked up and there was Aaron mendacity sleeping. Which I believed summed all of it up. He is acquired the most important factor in his life.

“That simply demonstrated that he wasn't fazed by what was about to occur. And he performed very well within the match, to be truthful, he was wonderful. It was nice to see him transfer on to Bologna and do extraordinarily properly there. He was the torch-bearer for Scots in Italian soccer actually.”

Then got here the transfer to Brentford, the place he was an immediate success till harm stopped him in his tracks.

Up till then, he had made the right-back place his personal in his debut season in England's prime flight when he performed 26 occasions for the Bees within the 2022-23 marketing campaign.

The previous couple of years have examined him mentally and bodily, however Pressley believes he'll come again a good higher participant.

“He is extremely gifted when it comes to having the ability to play off each ft,” he stated.

“At occasions you would not even know which was his stronger foot. He is a extremely good athlete and a modern-day fullback within the sense that he has the power to go from the fullback place and invert into the ‘six' place and play comfortably in the midst of the pitch.

“He has so many attributes. He simply wants video games and time and rhythm to regain that type.”