Saturday 15th April, 2017 at 7:55pm
After eight league games unbeaten in a row, Partick Thistle travelled to Ibrox to take on Rangers in an attempt to extend that impressive run of form. In the teams’ previous two meetings this season, the Gers had come out on top twice, once at Ibrox and once at Firhill. Unfortunately for the Maryhill men, it was more of the same as Rangers ran out 2-0 winners with goals from Kenny Miller and Jon Toral. It was a disheartening end to a great couple of months for the Jags and Thistle boss Alan Archibald spoke to ptfc.co.uk to give his verdict of the day’s clash.
First and foremost, Archie expressed his disappointment with the uncharacteristically poor performance of his side on the day.
“I was frustrated with the level of performance. I won’t take anything away from Rangers, they were good but we were really poor today. We made it easy for them today, apart from the first 20 minutes because we competed with them for that time. I think that it showed that we didn’t have many guys training during the week, that was very evident.”
The gaffer was also not happy with the fact that his side didn’t show the same fight as they did before securing a top six spot.
“It probably looked like the lads were on holiday which was what we’ve been working to avoid. They looked like strangers on the pitch, our ball retention was poor and even though the boys worked extremely hard, the play wasn’t good enough when we had the ball.”
Despite the team’s poor display at Ibrox, Archibald is still optimistic that his side will come back after a short break with motivation and improved fitness.
“A few teams that have made top six in recent years have just let the season fizzle out and although we know that we face some tough fixtures, we want to be competitive against these top sides. We must improve our results against the league’s best sides.”
Although the Jags boss was critical of his side, he also reminded everyone that Thistle were at a disadvantage due to injury problems through the week.
“We only had 10 players training until yesterday. Kris Doolan and Chris Erskine were able to join in at the end of the week but the injuries really did hamper our preparation for the game and allowed us less time to work on set-up during the week.”
Archie is hopeful that a two week break between now and his team’s next fixture will give them time to heal up and recuperate.
“We can give the boys some time off now. We like to think that the break should let most of the boys heal and will help get rid of those niggling injuries we’ve got throughout the squad. We’ll need everyone fit for the massive game with Hearts, after the split kicks in.”
The Jags boss was also appreciative of the travelling Thistle support who stayed past the final whistle to clap the team off the pitch.
“There were only two real positives today. The fans and Tomas Cerny’s performance. If it wasn’t for Tomas, the score could have been much higher but the fans were great as well. We appreciate the support and their backing has been fantastic all season.
Thistle return to action in a fortnight’s time at Tynecastle on Saturday the 29th of April with kick-off at 15:00.
A full game replay and extended highlights will be added shortly, both will be free for Jagzone subscribers.
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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.
