Thursday 27th October, 2016 at 12:25am
Thistle boss Alan Archibald was clearly delighted with his side’s win over Dundee on Wednesday night – Thistle’s first since the opening day of the season. He spoke to ptfc.co.uk after the full time whistle at Dens to talk through the 2-0 win.
“We’ve waited a long time to get a combination of good performances up front and at the back but we got that today and we’re all delighted with the result. We played well on Saturday and it was really hard to take not winning all three points. It was so important that we took the positives from that performance and brought them into tonight. I think we did that and it paid dividends as we came away with the win.
“It’s always hard to play against Paul Hartley’s teams, we know that from experience as we don’t have a great record up here. We had to work hard for the result today and that makes the win all the more rewarding.”
Ade Azeez was key to Thistle’s victory as he opened the scoring with his first league goal in Jags colours before turning provider by playing an inch perfect pass across the box for Doolan to slot home the second.
“I thought Ade was excellent tonight to be fair. He played well at the weekend and never got the reward so I was delighted to see him get on the scoresheet and bag an assist to boot. It was a great header for the first goal and he has certainly missed easier chances than that so far this season. I hope he takes some confidence from it and goes on a run from here – he certainly has the ability.
“Ade and Dools gave the Dundee real problems tonight and worked as a team to break them down. The two of them haven’t had a lot of time to work on that formation and I felt they could have done better at the weekend but they gave Dundee no rest today which was ever so good to see.”
The three points lifts Archie’s side to ninth spot and the boost his players will take from moving out of the bottom two is not something the Jags boss underestimates.
“All the players read the papers and it’s never nice to see yourselves in the bottom two, no matter what stage of the season you’re at. Moving up the table will breed confidence but we now have to go build on it in a massive game against St Johnstone on Saturday.”
Although there were lots of positives to take away from the City of Discovery, two notable negatives came on the injury front with Osman and Scully both having to leave the field due to injury in the closing stages of the game – the latter clearly in some distress.
“Abdul has just taken a dead leg, it’s a sore one but he should be OK I think. Scully has suffered a suspected dislocated shoulder, he’s off to the hospital so we’ll just need to wait and see how he is. It’s a major blow for the lad as he has been superb for us this season.”
