Friday 31st December, 2021 at 5:21pm
Given recent weather conditions and the current weather forecast for the next 48 hours, there will be a pitch inspection at 10am on Sunday morning ahead of our cinch Championship fixture against Greenock Morton.
We will update supporters with further information following this inspection.
The management team’s written previews and reactions are presented by The Jags Trust. You can keep up to date with the latest from The Jags Trust by visiting their website, www.jagstrust.com.
Partick Thistle kick off 2022 this Sunday with a cinch Championship game against Greenock Morton. The Jags welcome the division’s bottom club to Firhill for the second time this season having beaten the ‘Ton 3-0 earlier this term thanks to goals from Kevin Holt, Zak Rudden and Brian Graham. However, off the back of an impressive draw away from home at Kilmarnock, the Cappielow side will be hoping to take points from a top five club on the road once again when they travel to Glasgow this weekend. Thistle assistant manager Alan Archibald spoke to ptfc.co.uk ahead of the game, beginning by discussing the challenges of back-to-back call-offs in the last week:
“It means we have to adjust the training schedule a little bit. We plan things out well in advance and when you get two games called off in a row, that foils your plan a bit. The positive side of it was that we were able to give the players Christmas off to spend with their families but overall it’s been a frustrating time because we were looking forward to the games off the back of the Raith win.
“The one solace for us is that just about everyone in the country is dealing with the same problems. There have been plenty of postponements at every level so it’s not as if we’re on our own but, as I said, it’s particularly frustrating for us because we’ve been in good spirits and good form as of late.”
Now, preparing to return to action against Morton, Alan expects a difficult test against Dougie Imrie’s side.
“As is the case with every game, it’ll be tough. They got a good result away at Kilmarnock in midweek and managed to come from behind to get it so that shows a level of spirit and fight which can make a team very tricky to play against. I think we saw that in the game we played against them at Cappielow and we actually needed Jamie Sneddon to make a couple of great saves that night.
“They’ve changed manager since then though and that can sometimes give a team a bit of a lift but he won’t have had too much time to change things and we know the players well enough so nothing should catch us too off-guard.”
With more rain forecast between now and kick-off, conditions could prove difficult during the game and Archie says it’s imperative that the Jags use them to their advantage.
“I think it’s more than likely we’ll get a decent bit of rain over the course of the rest of the week so we have to expect the pitch to be quite heavy. We dealt with that pretty well during the Raith game and that has to be the blueprint for us. There will be areas of the pitch that are worse than others and it’s up to us to be clever and make sure we try to avoid those areas as much as possible.”
To finish, Alan gave us the latest team news ahead of Sunday’s fixture.
“We are down a few bodies at the moment with a few knocks and stuff like that. Unfortunately, that tends to be the case during the winter months but we just have to get on with it. The good thing for us is we’ve got players who can come into the starting XI and do a job; they’ve shown that already this season so we trust the players we’re bringing in when it’s needed.”
Exclusive video interviews with Thistle assistant manager Alan Archibald and Cammy Smith will be available for JagZone subscribers to watch today – log in to view.
Due to new restrictions on outdoor events, tickets for our game against Greenock Morton have been balloted for season ticket holders. Click here for the latest update on the ballot.
Season ticket holders will get live stream access for restricted attendance fixtures. Click here for more information.
A PPV live stream is available for supporters to purchase, priced at £12 – click here for more info.
We’ll have extended highlights and a full game replay of the fixture on JagZone following the game.
Article Copyright © 2021. Permission to use quotations from this article online is only granted subject to appropriate source credit and hyperlink to ptfc.co.uk.
