Saturday 25th February, 2017 at 8:24pm
After advancing to the quarter-finals of the William Hill Scottish cup, Partick Thistle were able to build on that momentum with a battling 2-0 victory at home to Hamilton last weekend. Today, it was Hearts who fell to defeat against the Firhill side, once again by a score-line of 2-0.
Kris Doolan opened the scoring with just five minutes gone and Liam Lindsay doubled the lead in the last 20 minutes. In between the goals, Hearts man Esmael Goncalves was sent off for two bookable offenses.
It was a successful day overall for Alan Archibald’s men and the Thistle manager spoke to ptfc.co.uk following the match.
The gaffer was pleased with the way his team handled the game, especially when they took the lead so early on.
“It was a real professional performance. We saw the game out very well which I was extremely happy with and we didn’t panic at any point. We did change our shape a couple of times but the lads dealt with that well.”
He was also complimentary of his players’ ability to stick to the game plan that they had set out during the week.
“We knew that we had to stop them playing, they’ve had a lot of criticism after the loss in midweek but they still have high quality players. It was good to score early because we knew that they would tire late on after a game just a few days ago.”
After coming off the bench to score two goals last Saturday, Kris Doolan was rewarded with a start for today’s match and he made good on his opportunity, scoring the opener and it’s fair to say Archie was impressed with the striker’s performance.
“He was excellent today. He does go on these runs where he’ll struggle to score for a few games then come back in and make a real difference. He’ll be disappointed not to have scored a couple today but I thought Doolan and Chris Erskine were the catalysts for our performance in much of the game.”
Despite winning two league games in a row, the Jags boss knows that you can’t be complacent when you’re near the bottom of the table.
“You never know where the league is going this year. We saw this week, three bottom half teams got wins over teams from the top six so you never know where your rivals are going to pick up points and because of that we certainly can’t relax. We have an important game up at Dens Park against Dundee on Wednesday and we have to stay focused on picking up points wherever we can.”
Thistle second goal came from a familiar source, Liam Lindsay. The defender already had five league goals to his name before today but Alan Archibald was surprised to see Lindsay score one that wasn’t a headed effort.
“I wasn’t sure why Abdul Osman was keeping it in, in the first place but he put a great ball in and obviously Liam takes the ball down and hammers it home brilliantly with his weaker foot. I’ve spoken to the defenders about scoring more from set plays considering the chances we get but I wasn’t expecting Liam to score a goal quite as good as that.”
Alan Archibald now has just a few days to plan for Wednesday’s trip to Dens Park to face sixth place Dundee. Kick-off for the game is 19:45.
A more in depth video interview with Alan Archibald is available now to Jagzone subscribers and will be followed by reaction from Liam Lindsay and Niall Keown. Log in now to see it as soon as it is available.
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Article Copyright © 2017. Permission to use quotations from this article online is only granted subject to appropriate source credit and hyperlink to ptfc.co.uk
