Michael Weir: Getting second place so crucial for Hibs

In terms of the battle for second place, it was probably a decent point Hibs ended up with at St Mirren because, at one stage, it looked like we were going to lose and Falkirk were going to win.

Hibs need to get back to winning ways if they wish to secure second place

We can’t be looking at it like that, though – the bottom line is that we haven’t won in five league games in the second tier and that’s nowhere near good enough for a team of this quality.

We can’t keep slipping up and hoping Falkirk are doing the same. As one of the biggest clubs in the division, we need to take the initiative. We’ve not being doing that lately and we’ve put ourselves under real pressure by not winning games against teams we should be beating.

Part of the problem has been the amount of goals we have been conceding. For most of the season, we were rock solid at the back but we seem to have lost our way defensively, which is worrying.

The players are now going to have to show their character in order to snap out of this slump.

We’ve got a Scottish Cup semi-final coming up and then we’re going to have to be right at it for the play-offs so we need to get things sorted out. Settling for third place is no good for us because, if we do end up in that position, we’ll be facing a Raith Rovers team who are absolutely flying at the moment. Playing an extra two games against a team like that would make getting promoted even tougher than it already looks.

It was always going to be hard to sustain the form we were showing earlier in the season and keep pace with a very good Rangers side, but I didn’t expect us to fall away so badly.

I was convinced we’d take the title race closer to the end of the season.

We’ve still got plenty to play for and it could yet end up a great season for us but there are a lot of worried Hibs fans at the moment because the way things are going, it’s becoming hard to see us winning promotion.

We urgently need to rediscover some kind of form because we can’t just flick a switch and make it return when we get to the play-offs. We face the bottom two in our next two games – only six points will be an acceptable return.