Wednesday 21st December, 2016 at 2:33pm
Ryan Edwards was the first to get a real sight at the Celtic goal on Tuesday night and although his shot was an easy save for Gordon the Australian was integral to a lot of the positive play that the visitors put together. Once the squad had made the trip across Glasgow and back to Firhill, Ryan took the time to speak exclusively to ptfc.co.uk about his views on the game, starting with his early chance.
“Yea, it was something we worked on in training and looked to focus on in the early periods of the game. When there’s an opportunity to press the centre back we try and pounce on it. Fortunately Šimunović had a little slip and I managed to get in. Looking back I maybe should have slipped David Amoo in but I had a shot instead and it was pretty disappointing. I maybe should have done better but I just couldn’t get the power or direction that was needed to beat Gordon.
“Apart from the result tonight there were a lot of positives to take from that performance. We can all put our hands up and say that Celtic were the better team ten days ago but the boys put in a really good effort and we really should have had a point today – we had some good chances.
“Now it’s really important to keep performance levels up and make sure the belief is still there in the dressing room. We have matched two of the best teams in the league this week and probably don’t have the points to show for it that we deserve but we now have three absolutely massive games against teams that sit close to us in the table so we need to make sure take maximum points to get us off the bottom of the table because we don’t deserve to be there.”
With only five points still separating seven teams the Ladbrokes Premiership is still incredibly tight, but Edwards knows this is unlikely to last for ever and doesn’t want to get cut adrift.
“I think a gap will emerge soon, we just need to take it a game at a time and make sure we do everything we can to get the three points on Friday night. We just need to stay positive and keep doing what we’re doing. We’re playing well but just not taking the chances. We all feel that will come though and we are working hard to make sure that it does on Friday.”
Anyone who has seen Ryan play this season will know that his energy is boundless, this drive was used to great effect in shutting down the Celtic midfield on Tuesday night – something the midfielder sees as being a big part of his game.
“We did some analysis on Celtic and we knew they played a lot through the midfield with Scott Brown dictating a lot of the play. I’m the type of player that hates seeing that happen to his team so I just tried to work hard to make it difficult for them to build any momentum. I felt that everyone in the midfield worked hard today to keep their best players quiet and for most of the game we did well to limit the chances they did have.
“From defence, through midfield and right up to the strikers we have all had good chances over the last few weeks but just haven’t been able to convert. We seem to be saying that every week though and it’s important that we start taking them. We’ll be working hard at training for the rest of the week with a view to hopefully taking all three points in Dingwall on Friday. I don’t think we’re too far away from the floodgates opening because we are creating good chances. We just need one of them to go in and I think we could well go on a really good run.”
