Friday 14th October, 2016 at 4:53pm
Alan Archibald goes into this weekend’s clash with Hamilton Academical knowing that, regardless of results elsewhere, a win will take his side off the bottom of the table. However, while speaking to ptfc.co.uk after the squad had finished training on Friday, he made it clear that motivation was not a problem.
“Obviously when you’re bottom of the table it’s never a nice place to be and the international break probably came at a bad time for us. The one bonus to come from the break is that Kris Doolan is fit again after missing last week with a thigh strain.
“Even though we’re in the position we’re in the mood has remained positive. It has been a sense of frustration rather than negativity. There’s a real frustration that we haven’t taken more from games where we have generally played pretty well but I think there will be a few teams in the bottom six who will be thinking and saying the same thing
“The good thing is that we haven’t become detached yet and a win on Saturday guarantees that we’ll move off the bottom – regardless of what the other teams around us do.”
After an incredibly tough start to the season in terms of fixtures, two home games in a row give Thistle a real opportunity to start registering wins and moving up the table.
“It’s a wee period where we are playing the teams around us in the league and we absolutely must make sure we are taking the maximum points from those games that we can.
“The next two matches are massive and we need to take as many points as we can from them. That starts with Saturday and all the boys are focused because they know how important these games are. We need to find a way of just making sure we get the three points. It doesn’t need to be pretty we just need to get the results over the line.”
