Friday 25th November, 2016 at 4:04pm
Alan Archibald was in a confident mood when he spoke to ptfc.co.uk ahead of Saturday’s clash with Rangers. Although the Jags boss knows it will be a tough test for his team he is looking to see a much improved performance from the disappointing display he witnessed last week at Fir Park.
Archie said: “It was a really disappointing one last week because we were way off it in terms of performance. We’ve only seen that once or twice this season and we’ll be looking for a good reaction this week.
“We’ve got a great group of boys here and we always see a reaction after a poor performance. We’ll be looking for just that on Saturday and we’ll need it because Rangers are a very good side who will punish teams of they aren’t on top of their game.”
In the wake of Saturday’s game Thistle have a run of seven very tricky games but Archibald knows it is the same for many of the teams and is certain his team have what it takes to make the best of the run.
“The run is tough but it’s mainly the number of games. If you have eight games in just over a month then you’re naturally going to play most of the teams in the league. What makes it look slightly worse for us is that we have Rangers, Celtic twice and Hearts but if you look at the end of the month we play the teams around us. Everyone has to play everyone so it isn’t a big deal for us. We just need to focus on our own preparation for each match and make the most of every opportunity to pick up points.
“The league is still so tight that places change hands based on single goals and individual errors. It’s going to stay like that for most of the season I think and we just need to focus on getting our performance levels back to where we know they should be.”
As every Thistle fan knows, it has been a long time since Thistle last beat Rangers, something Archibald is only to aware of and keen to correct.
“We had a similar record against Motherwell going into last week’s game and I think I said then that I don’t pay too much attention to those kinds of records. First and foremost I want to get back to winning ways at home. We haven’t made Firhill a difficult enough place for people to come to so far this season and that is something we want to correct. It would certainly be good to give our fans something to shout about.”
