Tuesday 6th August, 2013 at 2:01pm
The euphoria of the opening night fixture has started to subside but as is the norm at the early part of the season the games tend to come thick and fast and tonight the attention turns towards the Scottish Communities League Cup tie with Ayr United here at Firhill.
Every club will tell you that the League is the number one priority but a good Cup run can be worth its weight in gold and we start out on the road to Hampden with a match against a side managed by former Thistle striker Mark Roberts.
Alan Archibald admitted that he will give his team selection some serious thought before naming his side for the game but is determined to make sure that the club enter the draw for the next round, which is to be made on Wednesday.
“Priority number one is to ensure that we are in the draw and so we must look to win the game. We took a lot of positives from the game on Friday night but this game comes with a totally different expectation level where we will be expected to win. However I have been in the game long enough to know that no games are won on paper and it will only be a successful one if we play the game in the manner which I expect from the squad. Ayr are a side who will come here determined to put on a show and cause an upset and we will have to guard against that, however I have plenty of faith in my squad and if we do our jobs then we hopefully will come out on top.”
So the question is, what is the thinking about team selection for this one?
“We have one definite non-starter in Jordan McMillan who is suffering from an ankle injury and I do have concerns over a couple of others in the shape of Kris Doolan and Aaron Muirhead. However this will give others in the squad an opportunity to show what they can do, I have said it before but I will be relying on all members of the squad this campaign and right away I will be giving others a chance tonight. We have a lot of new players and some of them will definitely start tonight or feature from the bench, and the beauty of that is I don’t see this in any way us weakening the squad because as I stressed earlier this is a competition I want to do well in, we have not been successful in it recently. It’s time to change that.”
