Sunday 4th January, 2015 at 7:08pm
Having had our New Year’s Day game postponed due to a waterlogged pitch Alan Archibald is looking forward to getting back on the pitch come Sunday’s visit by Dundee United. Having said that, as the gaffer told ptfc.co.uk, the situation with injuries hasn’t abated any as the squad continues to go through something of an injury crisis.
“Sean Welsh is still injured, Frederic Frans is out, Higginbotham is suspended, McMillan, Carroll and Osman will all be missing and Gary Fraser has phoned in sick today as well so we are really down to the bare bones. The one bit of good news is that Bannigan is back – he trained today for the first time after being floored by an illness. We just need to cross our fingers and hope nobody else drops out.
“It’s not just the game that is made difficult, we’ve only trained with 14 bodies the last couple of days so we can’t really run through much on the training pitch either. Not ideal preparation for a big game but we’ll just have shuffle things around a bit and get on with it.”
There’s no doubt that confidence will be high in the United camp, especially off the massive derby win on Thursday.
“It will definitely be a tough game. They’ll be flying high after recent results and have real quality front, middle and back so we need to be really wary.Having said that we have had some very close games against them recently and as long as we keep it tight we have every chance.
“We know what we’re up against and have played well against them recently, especially at home, so we just need to focus on keeping them quiet. Even with the injuries we have enough quality in the squad to go out and win the game and that’s exactly what we’ll be looking to do.”
Although on a decent run, consistency remains a problem for Archibald’s side.
“We need to find a bit of consistency and put together a winning run. We’ve let ourselves down with a few draws in games we really should have won but we know that and we’re working with the players to make sure we make the most of every opportunity we get.”
