Saturday 19th April, 2014 at 2:52pm
After a fortnight without a game it’s back into action tomorrow afternoon when Thistle make the relatively short trip down to Kilmarnock as we reach the, post-split, business end of the season.
Our last outing ended in bitter disappointment with defeat against Hearts and for manager Alan Archibald it has been a long wait to get back into the thick of the action as he admitted when he spoke to [link:HOME] earlier today;
“To be honest after a result like the Hearts one you want a game the next day to try and get it out of your system. We’ve been desperate to get back playing and it is has been a long wait. We’ve spent the time well though. We’ve sat down with the players and watched the Hearts game back and analysed what went wrong. We simply made far too many mistakes. Just about the only positive thing that we could take from that game was the way that we played in the first 20-25 minutes when we passed and moved the ball well. We will be looking for a repeat of that tomorrow, except for the full 90 minutes this time.”
Alan continued;
“We are well and truly into the business end of the season now and we know that in the next five games we have to pick up points. One thing about the split is that you know that something has to give in every game and those around you will drop points; the reward for winning is an obvious one. A win tomorrow, for example, would see us go level on points with Kilmarnock and that would drag them back into it as well and we would know that at least two other teams would drop points as well.”
Finally Alan provided us with the latest injury news.
“We had some knocks towards the end of last week and we had to watch what we were doing in training but the good news going into tomorrow’s game is that it is only the long term injured players that will miss the game. Conrad Balatoni has trained this week and he has a chance of playing tomorrow which is good news for us. On the downside Stephen O’Donnell has had surgery on his hip and that’s the last we will see of him until pre-season. This is something that Stephen has been bothered with for some time and eventually he said that he couldn’t continue with it. It’s a little similar with Aaron Muirhead in the respect that Aaron had been carrying his injury for some time, since the Hearts game at Tynecastle in fact. There is a chance that Aaron will be back for the final game of the season but it is only an outside chance. Last season all our injuries seemed to be in midfield, this year they are all in defence. It’s a blow but it just gives other players the chance to come in and do well.”
Partick Thistle Stats
Current Form – Last Five Games
W D L F A
1 1 3 7 12
Scorers Season 2013-2014
Kris Doolan 9
Kallum Higginbotham 6
Steven Lawless 5
Lyle Taylor 5
Aaron Muirhead 4
Conrad Balatoni 2
Christie Elliott 3
Chris Erskine 2
Ross Forbes 1
Gary Fraser 1
Lee Mair 1
Jordan McMillan 1
Stephen O’Donnell 1
Aaron Taylor-Sinclair 1
Last Game
Scottish Premiership
Saturday April 5th 2014
Partick Thistle 2, Hearts 4
Kilmarnock Stats
Current Form – Last Five Games
W D L F A
2 0 3 8 10
Scorers Season 2013-2014
Kris Boyd 19
Chris Johnston 4
Rory McKenzie 4
Darren Barr 2
Sean Clohessy 2
Robbie Muirhead 2
Barry Nicholson 2
Lee Ashcroft 1
Sammy Clingan 1
Alexi Eremenko 1
Michael Gardyne 1
Jackson Irvine 1
Craig Slater 1
Own Goal 1
Last Game
Scottish Premiership
Saturday April 5th 2014
Kilmarnock 1, St Johnstone 2
Last Meeting
Scottish Premiership
Saturday January 18th 2014
Partick Thistle 1, Kilmarnock 1
Teams
Thistle: Gallacher, O’Donnell, Taylor-Sinclair, Balatoni, Craigen, Bannigan, Lawless (Elliott), Mair, Taylor, Fraser (Muirhead), Higginbotham.
Kilmarnock: Samson, Tesselaar, Irvine, Clingan, Boyd, Johnston (Kiltie), McKenzie (Gros), Slater, Pascali, Ashcroft, Muirhead.
Scorers
Thistle: Higginbotham (3)
Kilmarnock: Muirhead (90)
Crowd: 4,092
Match Details
Scottish Premiership
Saturday April 19th 2014
Kilmarnock v Partick Thistle
Kick-off: 3:00pm
Admission Details
Supporters Buses
Match Officials
Referee: Brian Colvin
Assistant Referees: Stuart Stevenson and Ross Haswell
Fourth Official: Greg Aitken
Other Fixtures
Scottish Premiership
Hearts v Ross County
Inverness Caledonian Thistle v Aberdeen (Friday)
Motherwell v Celtic
St Johnstone v Dundee United
St Mirren v Hibernian
