Saturday 19th August, 2017 at 9:01pm
Partick Thistle’s fruitless start to the 2017/18 Ladbrokes Premiership season continued today with a 1-0 defeat by St. Johnstone at McDiarmid Park. Losses to Hibs and Celtic along with today’s defeat leaves Thistle without a point three games in. In a scrappy game, one moment of quality was enough to separate the Jags and the Saints. Michael O’Halloran latched onto an incisive through ball and found the net via the post. Thistle boss, Alan Archibald, spoke to ptfc.co.uk after the game.
In previous meetings with St. Johnstone, the first goal is often scored by the eventual winners and Alan Archibald was upset that his side fell behind first.
“I thought that St. Johnstone were the better team in the first half. They won the midfield battles and we lost a poor goal from our perspective. We lost the first goal and everyone knows how difficult it is to break St. Johnstone down when they get in front.”
Archie ended up putting Kris Doolan and Conor Sammon on up front as well as having Miles Storey on and the gaffer admits it got to a point where he was just trying to inject some attacking threat into the team.
“We wanted to create danger. Sometimes you just have to mix things up and change how you play when your plan A isn’t quite working. Miles went out wide but that’s nothing new to him. Also, Callum Booth was forced off so that changed things a bit in terms of who we could bring on. Towards the end, we were just trying to change the game and create some chances but, unfortunately, it didn’t quite work for us.”
During the second half, Thistle were claiming for a penalty when Miles Storey’s pass came off the arm of Murray Davidson. It definitely struck the midfielder’s arm but the gaffer doesn’t think his side can feel aggrieved as it was a tough call.
“You see them given sometimes. It comes off his arm but it’s a short distance and his arm is trailing behind his body. Sometimes those are given, sometimes there not but I have no qualms, we should have done more to get back into the game.”
Despite an incredibly difficult start to the Premiership season, Alan doesn’t think his team can use that as an excuse when coming up against good sides.
“We want to get off the mark. We’ve got Aberdeen next so it doesn’t get any easier. We knew that we had a tough start going into the season but that doesn’t excuse us from putting everything into games. It doesn’t matter how difficult the games are, we have to try to get some points on the board.”
Although his side are rooted to the foot of the table, Archie believes his side have enough character and quality to climb the table soon.
“We have a squad of good lads and good characters who I know can get us out of this position. I don’t think the league will be as forgiving this year as previous campaigns when we’ve started slowly because there are more good teams than ever.”
Alan and his squad now begin preparations for next Saturday’s meeting with Aberdeen. Kick-off is 15:00 at Firhill.
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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.
