Saturday 27th August, 2016 at 9:25pm
It was late heartbreak for Thistle in today’s Ladbrokes Premiership game against Hearts. Tony Watt scoring a 90th minute winner for the visitors to snatch all three points. It was a difficult one for the Jags to take but a dejected Alan Archibald still spoke to ptfc.co.uk post-match.
He thought the result was unfair on his men.
“I think it was harsh, I thought a draw would have been a fair result. We put enough into the game to deserve at least a point.”
Despite the loss, the manager knows that there are positives to be taken from the match.
“I was disappointed with the goal we lost at the end because I thought we looked comfortable defensively and I didn’t think they cut us open in the second half. If anything, at points we looked more likely to grab a winner.”
However, Archie wasn’t happy with the way Hearts scored their first goal – particularly given as it was another conceded from a set piece.
“Liam Lindsay was marking Paterson and he has to get tight to him which he did in the second half. He’ll learn to always stay tight with experience and thankfully he made up for it with a great header for the goal from our point of view.”
The gaffer was happy with his defensive pairing’s overall performance And was quick to praise young centre back Liam Lindsay who showed character to bounce back from a costly error in Aberdeen last week.
“On the ball I thought Liam was a bit shaky but defensively he looked good. Him and Danny Devine coped really well against a great attacking team who were good even with the changes they made.”
The upcoming international break gives some of the club’s side-lined players a chance to focus on recovering and Alan Archibald gave us an update on some of those players.
“Gary Fraser will hopefully not be too far away by the time we get back to games. If his rehab goes to plan he should be back in three weeks or so. Bannigan and Dumbaya are obviously more long term.”
The boss was keen to stress that two narrow losses against two of the top three from last season’s Premiership is not the end of the world.
“There are a lot of positives to take and we’ve got a big month coming up. In September we play more of the teams from around about us. They’re massive games for us and we need to learn from these matches. I think one thing we have learnt is we need to be clinical.
“In the last two games we’ve been up against top sides who’ve been clinical against us and to be competitive we need to take our chances.”
