Sunday 29th December, 2013 at 2:32pm
Yesterday’s heavy defeat against Motherwell was a painful experience for all associated with the Club. When speaking to [link:HOME] after the game Thistle manager Alan Archibald made no attempt to gloss over what was clearly a very poor display from his team.
“I thought it was embarrassing to say the least. The second half performance just wasn’t acceptable. No matter what division you are in you can’t play like that; it could have been more at the end.”
What made the final score even more disappointing yesterday was the fact that Thistle had made such a positive start to the game. Said Alan;
“We started the game really well, we worked really hard and started the game in their half. We created a really good chance for the goal and we had a couple of opportunities for another goal after that and got into good positions but took the wrong option or made the wrong decision; that’s something that has been killing us all season. The other side of that coin is that Motherwell were able to capitalise on our mistakes by taking the right option more often than not.”
The manager continued;
“In the second half we left ourselves wide open. I know we were having a go, we said to the lads at half-time that we would be as well having a go, but you still need to keep your shape. We did start the second half well and had we pulled a goal back we would have been back in the game but we conceded a goal after we gave the ball away in an important area of the pitch. Teams don’t tend to simply give goals away but that’s what we’ve been doing recently. All the goals we lost today were the result of defensive errors where we got into the wrong position or made the wrong pass. It is difficult to comprehend where that came from after playing so well against Inverness when we kept a clean sheet, our first since the opening day of the season.”
Alan was able to clear up the reason why he substituted Christie Elliott midway through the first half.
“It wasn’t a tactical decision. We took Christie off because he was unwell. It was the same thing that Jordan McMillan had and had to be substituted against Inverness.”
