St Mirren goalkeeper Zach Hemming has thanked the club’s goalkeeping coach Jamie Langfield for restoring his shattered confidence, and he has given the former Aberdeen number one a huge slice of credit for his recent impressive performances.
Hemming was a stand-out once more even as the Saints went down to a 3-0 defeat to Celtic on Tuesday night, with both his own manager Stephen Robinson and visiting boss Brendan Rodgers acknowledging that the score would have been even more emphatic but for the display of the on-loan Middlesbrough stopper.
Hemming arrived at St Mirren in the summer on the back of a disappointing second loan spell at Kilmarnock, but between manager Robinson and coach Langfield, they have managed to get the 23-year-old back to his best.
"I was low on confidence at the start of the season, maybe from last year,” Hemming said.
“But obviously with Jamie, he just sat me down and told me to play my game. I had a few good performances at the start of the season, and it just boosts your confidence.
"The performances I've had in the last few weeks, I cannot say I'm low on confidence - I'm probably too high on confidence!
“I'm really happy here, really settled, and I think once you're settled and happy then the football and performances just take over. That's what is happening at the minute.
"I love training every day, I'm probably going to miss it having the next few days off. But I love being at the club and I'm really happy this season."
Hemming made a string of impressive stops as Celtic bombarded the goal of the 10-man Saints in the second half of the midweek encounter, but he preferred to focus on what the entire team could have done better as a whole.
"Obviously, [I was] pleased with my performance but it doesn't take away the fact we got beat 3-0,” he said.
“It's disappointing because we put in a good performance last week against Aberdeen and we came into the game with a lot of confidence.
"But we kicked ourselves in the foot by conceding two goals in the opening six minutes and then the red card didn't help as well.
“The boys gave what they could in the second half and tried to play as much as we can and keep the ball, but it wasn't to be.
“My job is to keep the ball out of the net and the main thing is that I made saves.
"I thought the boys gave everything, take away the first ten minutes - you can't start a game like that against Celtic - but the boys didn't give up and you could see we were still trying things to get back into the game.
"And then when the red card happened it was tough for the boys. The manager said to try and play a little bit more, but we just couldn't get any breakthrough."
Despite going into the winter break on the back of a defeat, the pause in action provides a good chance for the St Mirren players to reflect on their successes of the previous year, and the positive start they have made to the league season as a whole despite some recent wobbles.
"You've got to look at the league table, we're sat fifth,” Hemming said.
“We had good results at the start of the season and we've had a little dip in recent weeks. But the result as Aberdeen just shows what type of team we are.
"We can really hurt teams with the way that we play. We didn't concede a goal at Aberdeen and the boys defended unbelievably well. Our organisation was really good and then you come into a game like [the Celtic game] and get beat 3-0, it's hard. But we've just got to really get together now.
"The league is really tight this year, but I think we've got enough quality in the team. The manager believes in all the players and what we do. Whoever plays, no matter who it is, the manager's got loads of belief in everyone.
"Hopefully we'll get a run of wins together, get points on the board and that will cement our place in the table, and hopefully [we’ll] finish a bit higher.”
