Friday 27th September, 2019 at 3:59pm
Alan Archibald returned to Firhill earlier this week as part of Ian McCall’s new management team. He spoke to ptfc.co.uk after the first week of training with the Jags squad ahead of tomorrow’s clash with Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
“It’s been a good week. It’s been really hard to get to know the players because of the game against Celtic on Wednesday. You don’t do a lot in training with the match on Wednesday but it has been good to get settled in and get to know the players.”
We asked Archie what the differences in roles were between being a manager and assistant manager.
“It’s all similar roles. Ian is quite full on and lets you get on with the training. That is down to me and Neil Scally to go and take training on a daily basis. He’s always there overseeing it and having a bit input but he mostly lets you get on with it.
“I’m used to being a coach. I did it when Jackie McNamara and Simon Donnelly were in charge at the club. When you become a manager you get more duties to do outside of training, more to deal with. All that is now something that the gaffer has to deal with, me and Neil just deal with training.”
There has been limited time to get to know the Thistle squad on the pitch but the management team have been working hard to get the team fully prepared for tomorrow’s game.
“It affected the Celtic game more. You don’t know the players at all and the manager doesn’t know them personally. It has given us a couple of days to get to know them on the training pitch. The eleven that started and put so much into the game on Wednesday were off on Thursday but that let us spend more individualised time with the substitutes and get to know them a bit better.
“When you get on the training pitch you can see the players and their traits and Wednesday night certainly helped that. On Wednesday we did a lot of things blind, simply because we only had one training session with the players. Having a couple of extra days has allowed the manager to get focused and set up a plan for tomorrow’s game against Inverness.”
Inverness provide a formidable opposition with John Robertson’s side but the Jags camp have been working hard to make sure the squad is prepared for the game.
“You know what to expect. Their team usually has one or two changes. They are big and physical but they have two wide players who are more than capable of playing. They’ve got Miles Storey up front who offers that bit of pace in an attacking area too. They are strong at home and we need to cut out the individual errors first and foremost. That’s something the manager will be driving home at them.”
Finally, Alan updated us with team news.
“The long term injuries miss out and we’ve had a couple of niggles which will hopefully get the ok from the physiotherapist. Gary Harkins and Craig Slater have been back in training this week, which I think is there first week of training all season so it’s a start of a mini pre-season for those players and they’ve been working very hard on their own after each training session.”
More preview interviews with Ryan Williamson and Thistle assistant manager, Alan Archibald, are all available to JagZone subscribers – log in to see them.
Jagzone members will also be able to watch extended highlights of the game.
Can’t make it to the Caledonian Stadium? JagzoneLIVE will bring you coverage of the full 90 minutes through our audio commentary service which begins begins at 2:45pm – you can listen in here.
For a full list of all the great content you can access from just £5.99 per month as a Jagzone member, click here.
Article Copyright © 2019. Permission to use quotations from this article online is only granted subject to appropriate source credit and hyperlink to ptfc.co.uk.
