Saturday 29th August, 2015 at 2:20pm
Thistle face yet another tough game as Aberdeen turn up to Firhill with a daunting 100% record. Manager, Alan Archibald, spoke to ptfc.co.uk to give his thoughts on this weekend’s encounter.
“We’re not on a great run, so a fixture against Aberdeen isn’t the first one you are looking for. It’s a good game to have as the players need less motivation to perform. They’ll go out and enjoy it against the team that finished second top in the country last season. We did alright against them in April and we’ll need a similar type of performance tomorrow.
“We don’t have a great record against Aberdeen, winning only one of the six games against them since we returned to the Premiership. We’ve had a couple of poor performances against them and we will have to be good on our day and play better than we have recently. We need to start well and maintain a high tempo.”
While Alan knows the danger posed by the Dons, he is keen his side stamp their impact on the game.
“We’ll give them the respect they deserve, they are a very good team, but we’ll have a plan to play them and hopefully get the three points. They’ve brought in two captains from other teams and they both have great strengths, but I’m only concerned about Partick Thistle. We need to go out there, keep the ball well and use our creative players to get at their defence.
“Our performances have been inconsistent but our team selections have been inconsistent recently too. Tomorrow is a chance to put an end to that. We will be looking to exploit their weaknesses, as well as keeping our own goal intact, especially early on. If we concede an early goal then it could be a long afternoon for the boys.”
Alan is still hopeful of adding more players to his squad and hopes the closure of the transfer window may open some opportunities.
“We’re still looking for more additions to the squad and we’re hoping that the conclusion of the window will allow us to bring players in quickly. We picked up Frederic Frans after the window closed last season so there is always quality available. We’ll be looking to get good players to enhance our squad, whether that is on loan or as permanent Partick Thistle players.”
Alan has almost a full squad to pick from for the game against Aberdeen giving him a selection headache for good reasons for once.
“With the exception of Christie Elliott, everyone has been training this week. Stuart Bannigan is available again having sat out the Falkirk match with suspension. Sean was rested to give his toe time to heal and Mathias came through his 45 minutes unscathed. We’ll have almost a full squad to pick from and that gives me options as to how we approach the game tomorrow.”
