Saturday 30th July, 2016 at 11:00am
Thistle will conclude their Betfred Cup group stage tomorrow afternoon with the visit of Queen’s Park to Firhill with the aim of maximum points still firmly in sight. Manager, Alan Archibald knows a draw will secure his side’s progress to the last 16 of the competition, with a win guaranteeing a seeded placing in the draw. Ptfc.co.uk spoke to the gaffer ahead of the Glasgow derby to get his thoughts.
“We are exactly where we wanted to be at this stage in the group. We have maximum points and know that a draw will see us progress as group winners. We want to be one of the seeded sides in the next round so we’ll be going all out for the win that will secure that. We don’t know who will be in the unseeded portion of the draw but to be guaranteed to avoid the sides who have been competing in European competition is something we are all aiming for.
“We know it will be an extremely difficult game. Gus MacPherson always has his sides organised and difficult to break down, so we’re expecting a very tough game. We’ll have to be patient and not get frustrated as we look to break them down.”
It took Thistle until October to have seven different competitive scorers, this season it has taken just three games, a factor which has pleased the manager.
“It’s great to see so many players on the scoresheet so early in the season. One thing we lacked last season were goals and getting numbers in the box. So far this season, even though it is early, we’ve not had that problem and we’ve seen the likes of Lawless, Erskine and Edwards charging into the box in support of the striker. Hopefully that continues throughout the season and we see a number of them popping up with strikes all through the campaign.”
With lots of rotation in the first three Betfred Cup games, it has allowed a lot of players to get minutes in their legs as the players prepare for the first Ladbrokes Premiership clash next Saturday.
“We’ve done a bit of rotation throughout the games and it has worked well. We’ve brought players up to speed in terms of minutes and they are raring to go for the Premiership kick off. We’ll continue to rotate the squad for tomorrow’s game as we look to get maximum points.”
Finally we asked the gaffer for his team news.
“It looks a lot brighter than it did at the start of the campaign. We’re only really missing Christie Elliott, Gary Fraser, Abdul Osman and Stuart Bannigan. Daniel Devine looks to have recovered from his knock and we’ll see how he is tomorrow. Tomas Cerny and Ryan Scully have been training all this week so we’ll hope to see one of them in goals for the game.”
