Forest Green Rovers boss Mark Cooper is backing Hibs striker Christian Doidge to get firing sooner rather than later.
The Welshman arrived at Easter Road during the summer for a six figure fee. He had spent the previous three seasons working under Cooper at Forest Green, minus a Bolton loan stint.
In that time he scored 66 goals for the Gloucestershire club. His old boss has explained how Hibs can get the best out of him.
He told the Edinburgh Evening News: “It’s not for me to tell Paul Heckingbottom how to play him but we played him predominantly as a No. 9 up on his own. He can play with a partner but he’s always got to be the one closest to goal.
“We played with a No. 10 behind him and all we used to work on with Christian was getting him to run towards goal and not to get involved in too much of the hold-up play.
“We wanted him to stay as close to the goal as possible. We had good players behind him and we served him up a lot of good chances. We didn’t want Christian playing outside the width of the box.”
Doidge suits Hibs’ formation but something isn’t clicking
If Cooper has seen Doidge work effectively in a one striker formation, you have to question why it isn’t working at Hibs.
Hibs regularly deploy a 4-3-2-1 formation, with Florian Kamberi or Doidge the senior choices. With Scott Allan behind them, they’ll have plenty of chances created for them.
It’s similar to the formation Doidge used to play at Forest Green. Perhaps it’s just that the Welshman is taking his time adapting to Scottish football.
That’s not just him, that’s many of Heckingbottom’s recruits. Joe Newell, Josh Vela and Adam Jackson all arrived from the EFL this summer, but have all had similarly shaky starts.
With Hibs languishing in ninth, they really could be doing with their marquee summer signing stepping up to the plate sooner rather than later.