Friday 18th August, 2017 at 1:45pm
Having played on Friday night last weekend, Alan Archibald has had a little bit longer to consider his side’s 1-0 defeat to Celtic, the Jags gaffer knows his side need no further motivation for a tough match in Perth this Saturday.
“There were a lot of positives to take from the performance last Friday night, especially when you see how good they were on Wednesday. They didn’t really cut us open which was very pleasing, they had to work for their chances and we stayed in the game.
“I know it can be frustrating for our fans at times when we sit in and stop them playing but it’s vital that you don’t get cut open, especially in the early stages. It was good defending from the lads and certainly better than we saw at Easter Road so that was very encouraging.”
Having played St Johnstone less than a fortnight ago the trip is one everybody is already familiar with this season. Despite an excellent performance and resounding victory the last time out Archibald knows things will be tougher come Saturday.
“It’s going to be a tough game but we can certainly take heart from the Betfred Cup game last week, a game in which we played very well. It will be harder though – it always is when you play a team twice in a short amount of time. They’ll be full of confidence after another great result at the weekend but we’ll just need to do everything we can to nullify that threat early on by performing at the level we know we are capable of.”
There were two new additions for the squad which faced Celtic on Friday and it’s fair to say Archie was pleased with his latest acquisitions.
“We’re delighted to get them on board. We only got their medicals done on the Friday morning so we didn’t want to put them both in straight away. We put Conor in from the start though and he did really well.
“They both know the league, they know our players and how we want to play and most importantly they know the opposition. That familiarity is so valuable in new players and should mean they don’t take long to bed in.
“The good thing is that I think they are both out to prove a point and you can see that real hunger in them all the time. I hope that will only go to motivate them further and that hunger gets converted to goals sooner rather than later.
“The combination of attacking players gives us a number of very strong and very different options which isn’t something we’ve always had, As I say, it’s great to get them in and we look forward to seeing how they get on.”
Despite his team currently sitting on no points the Jags boss remains confident in his side’s ability.
“It’s never a good place to be when your team is sat on zero points and we want to make that right as soon as possible. We’ve had a tough start and we knew the reality of just how tough our first couple of games would be but now we really need to start getting points on the board, hopefully that all begins on Saturday.”
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