Wednesday 13th August, 2014 at 9:51am
After a wonderful, albeit delayed, opening night of the season for Thistle, manager, Alan Archibald looked back on what made the difference for his players.
“The midfield was outstanding tonight gave us a real driving force but I thought we were strong at the back too. The new boy Dan has only had a couple of days training with Conrad but they looked strong together and they’ll only get better from here.
“I think we had a few performances like that last season but we just didn’t get the goals. I think the difference tonight was that we got the ball into the box and made the other team defend. Last year we missed goals at time but that certainly wasn’t the case tonight.”
Although County rarely challenged there were times that a goal for the visitors could have seen Thistle experience a similar frustration to that felt last season – dominating games but not getting the result. The fact that the home team were able to keep a clean sheet topped off a great night for the gaffer.
“Getting the clean sheet at the end made it an almost perfect performance from ourselves. I was a wee bit worried they were going to nick a goal right at the end there an put a dampner on what was a fantastic night but we held out in the end.
“Everybody did well tonight. Foxy kept us ahead with agreat instictive save but there were top performances all over tonight which was really pleaseing. It’s a nice problem to have, two fantastic goalkeepers at the club, it was hard to pick one to start tonight.”
Gary Fraser got a deserved goal and put in a man of the match performance and Archie could not have been happier for the youngster.
“I was absolutely delighted for the young lad, his passing is incredible and his energy levels were superb tonight. We made a tactical decision tonight to play Bannigan and Osman where we did and give Gary the licence to get forward and play and he certainly did that!”
