Blair Spittal opens up on Neil Critchley's first days in Hearts hot seat and what he has been stressing to his new team

If Carlsberg did managerial welcome Saturday’s then it would include an afternoon of glorious sunshine and four goals for new Hearts boss Neil Critchley.

But a full-time Tynecastle tannoy announcement confirming city rivals Hibs had replaced them at the bottom of the Premiership would probably be stretching it.

For a Jambos side that had achieved a first league win of the campaign with a destruction of St Mirren, news of events on Tayside should have been small beer for the support but that scoreline brought the biggest cheer from a feelgood-starved fanbase.

Even Critchley admitted he couldn’t have stage-managed a better way to settle into the Gorgie dugout and scripting those two late Dundee United goals at Tannadice would just have been greedy.

But this success for the Englishman comes with a few caveats. Few sides will put up as poor a showing as St Mirren did on Saturday and after ending a run of pulling in just two points from 24, this win provides something of a season reboot and the chance to build some momentum.

Everything went to plan and the performance of Blair Spittal typified the stunning reversal of fortune of a team that had run out of answers under previous boss Steven Naismith.

The midfielder capped his best showing in a Hearts jersey with a goal and he was quick to stress that providing Critchley with a winning start doesn’t absolve their awful start to the campaign but it did provide the launchpad for new beginnings.

He said: “It’s a massive result for us. Coming away from the defeat at Aberdeen in our last game when we knew the performance was good even if the result wasn’t, I said after the game it was important we backed that up. We needed to start getting the result as well as the