Saturday 28th October, 2017 at 7:29pm
Having secured their maiden win of the league season last Saturday against Dundee, Partick Thistle have been looking at the table optimistically with prospects suddenly looking much better. A midweek stalemate with Hamilton left the Jags within touching distance of those above them and a 1-0 win today against St. Johnstone at home puts them up two places in 10th position. A solitary Miles Storey goal was enough for the Maryhill men to keep the points in Glasgow as they kept a clean sheet for the second league game in a row having failed to do so at all in their opening ten games of the Ladbrokes Premiership campaign. Thistle manager, Alan Archibald, spoke to ptfc.co.uk following his side’s win.
Archie began by explaining just how happy he was with the defensive side of his team’s performance, earning the aforementioned clean sheet.
“Getting another clean sheet is brilliant. We started the season poorly, having no shutouts in the league and conceding some poor goals, but now keeping two clean sheets back-to-back is pleasing. Our game management was much better today as well. You could see that we were still a bit fragile at times but we saw it out and I’m delighted with it.”
The gaffer then mentioned about the goal. Miles Storey’s second for the club and second in consecutive home games; it was the spark of quality that was needed to break down a resolute St. Johnstone rear-guard.
“Miles used his pace well. He recognised the space in behind and exploited it brilliantly. It was a very good finish too, showing plenty of composure and it’s good to see him building on the goal from last week.”
The Jags boss then talked about Miles’s potential with the ex-Inverness player coming into a run of form in the red and yellow.
“I think he just needs a run of games to help get his confidence up and, of course, his two goals will help that as well. He didn’t get much game-time at Aberdeen and when you’re not being played for so long it can be difficult to then going back to your best form but hopefully he’s almost there now.”
After an excellent week during which Thistle have taken seven points from a possible nine, the Jags have moved up two places into tenth. However, Alan knows his side are still in a fight at the bottom of the table with some tough fixtures ahead.
“Coming off the bottom – for more than one day – will boost the confidence. We’ve looked better going forward and to get the two clean sheets is massive. We could have got the win on Tuesday but the other wins make it easier to take. We have some difficult fixtures coming up and we know we have to keep picking up points otherwise we’ll find ourselves bottom again.”
The manager also gave us an update on Chris Erskine who despite being named in today’s squad, dropped out at the last minute.
“Chris trained this week but felt his calf a little bit yesterday. We asked him to try the warm up but he felt it again near the end of the warm up and he dropped out.”
Alan and his squad now look towards next Saturday’s trip to Ibrox as they look to make it four games without defeat. Kick-off from Govan is 15:00 next weekend.
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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.
