Buddie Banter: Timely Eamonn Brophy return can help swing top six race in St Mirren's favour

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Starting a new job is never easy.Getting to know your new surroundings, meeting your colleagues and trying to get to grips with your workload all take time.Unless they take over in the middle of the summer, football managers rarely have the luxury of a bedding in period.And while Stephen Robinson has been fortunate to take over a team that were on fine form, he has still nonetheless been dropped into the Saints role in the midst of a crucial period of the season.He’s also had two of the toughest fixtures he could have faced to kick off with.While Hearts arrived in Paisley on a fairly poor run of form, they are still currently the third best team in the division by some distance looking at the current Premiership table.Going a man down so early in the first half certainly didn’t help matters for St Mirren either.A nice easy fixture to help ease you into your second game?Not a chance for Robinson unfortunately.A trip to Celtic Park beckoned, a less than happy hunting ground for the Buddies aside from that wonderful 2-1 victory at Parkhead last season.This time around instead of a struggling Hoops side led by Neil Lennon, they faced Ange Postecoglou’s league leaders.It didn’t take long for the hosts to start dominating possession, but in fairness the Saints defence stood up to the challenge with aplomb and deservedly went into the half-time break level.It was always going to be tough to repeat the feat after the break, especially with the kind of quality Celtic had to call on off the bench in the second half.One trio of substitutes - Tom Rogic, James Forrest and Nir Bitton - had 128 international caps between them.It’s always tough for clubs outside the Old Firm to compete with that sort of squad depth, and in the end the