Michael Weir: Those two misses will be haunting Christian Doidge

Christian Doidge must prove doubters wrong after misses against St Mirren. Picture: SNS Group

There will be no-one more disappointed than him although everything turned out well in the end with Scott Allan’s late winner which brought the most important thing, a win on the opening day of the season.

I know everyone would have liked to have won with a bit of style - and it is always nice to hit the ground running - but there’s no point in playing well and losing, just ask our city neighbours Hearts which they’d have preferred.

Paul Heckingbottom’s team against the Buddies contained five new players and it might take a little time for them to gel and get used to the game up here. People down south tend to underestimate Scottish football and, while it might not be the most talented, it is tough and you can be found wanting very quickly.

Good strikers are hard to come by and with Hibs having reputedly paid a fair sum for Doidge, there will be that expectation from the supporters that he’ll get among the goals. Scott Allan has an advantage over the others who arrived over the summer in that he’s already built a reputation for himself, the others who have arrived from England are, I’d imagine, largely unknown to the majority of Hibs supporters and so they have that added pressure of making a name for themselves here.

There is a pressure of playing for Hibs and when you pull on that No.9 jersey the fans are looking for goals, a challenge to which Doidge will have to meet. Playing in front of crowds like Saturday’s will be a new experience for him having come from Forest Green Rovers where the average attendance was somewhere around the 3000 mark and never got higher than 5000 last season.

But it would be unfair to judge him on this one game, it’s a long season and I’ve every confidence that we’ll see the team as a whole improve as we go along.

My advice to Doidge would be to keep working hard, to keep getting himself into those positions rather than shy away from it. If he keeps doing that then the goals will come and, as we’ve seen many times, it just takes getting one to spark a run of goals.

As I have said, when you are something of an unknown, fans can make up their minds about you very quickly but everyone deserves the chance to find their feet and show what they can do.

You also have to trust the manager, that he has done his homework on each of his signings and that he believes they can play at this level. It’s important the players remember their boss has faith in them, but it’s up to them to perform.