Michael Weir: Comparing Christian Doidge with Lewandowski caused a chuckle - but Hibee can’t stop scoring

Striker is now prolific

Christian Doidge in training

I had a wee laugh when I saw Jack Ross draw a comparison between Christian Doidge and Robert Lewandowski. It reminded me of the time Billy McNeill made a similar comment about a young Stevie Fulton and Roberto Baggio.

Sometimes that sort of thing can be unfair on a player, those things tend to stick and they have to carry that throughout their career.

Ross obviously wasn’t suggesting that Doidge is likely to be joining Lewandowski at Bayern Munich or to be making a move to the Bundesliga, he was simply highlighting the fact that his player is now finding the back of the net on a consistent basis.

Even so, I’m sure Doidge will have found himself on the end of some good-natured ribbing from his team-mates. Football dressing-rooms can be merciless places at times and you can bet he’ll be reminded of it often enough.

But to be fair to him he’s done really well in the past few weeks, six goals in four games is a terrific return. Okay, Kilmarnock’s goalkeeper didn’t cover himself in glory but Doidge was in there and that’s the point Ross was making, good strikers have a knack of getting themselves into the right positions.

Fans are always looking for the “worldy” type of goal, the screamer from 25 yards that flies into the top corner, but sniffing out those scrappy goals is an art in itself.

The fact we’ve changed our formation and are now playing with two up has made a difference, as I said earlier in the season Doidge needs someone up there with him and that’s paying obvious dividends.

He took a fair bit of criticism for not scoring, something that was always going to happen. When you arrive at a new club with a sizeable price tag on your head everyone expects goals right away but now he’s answering that in the best way possible.

I also felt at the start of the season everyone knew how we’d play, the formation was far too rigid. We were predictable and opposition teams set up accordingly. You need to be able to adapt, to change systems - although it has to suit the players we have - and, again, I’m sure that’s something Ross will be working on for the longer term.