Saturday 25th October, 2014 at 9:41am
As the team prepare for the match against St Johnstone, we spoke to Alan Archibald to find out how preparations were going.
“St Johnstone will be a tough, there’s no doubt about that. We’ve always had very close games against them, they edged us 1-0 at Firhill and the other two were draws last season. We know what we’re going to get with them, they’re a well organised, tight side and they can be very difficult to break down. Having said that there are areas where you can get some joy against them.
“I think they’re missing Stevie May and Steven MacLean but which team wouldn’t miss two quality players? They’ve brought in Brian Graham and McFadden, two boys that we know all about so they will be dangerous.”
It was well publicised that James McFadden trained with Thistle for a number of weeks at the beginning of the season and Alan will have his team well prepared.
“James has a role in the team now that allows him to go and hurt teams. I think he’ll play as a kind of number 10 or up front as a striker and he’s given that licence to get up and cause problems. I think Faddy kept all of his good performances for against us last season, that tied in with the fact he was obviously here at the start of the season means our lads know all about him. It’s good to have that knowledge but all that counts is what happens out there on the pitch.”
Archie felt robbed last week after a poor decision led to a late penalty and resulted in the Jags leaving Dundee with nothing but the important thing for the Firhill gaffer is how his team moves on from that.
“I think it was probably one of our best performances so far this season. We nullified them and played ever so well – it’s just one of those things – but it doesn’t make it any easier to take. We’ll take the positives from it and move into today’s game confident that we can rectify last week’s result with a good performance and all three points here today.
“Our home form this season has been good to be fair so there’s no reason we shouldn’t be confident of building on that against St Johnstone.”
All that was left was for the gaffer to give us the all important team news, and it’s good news on the injury front.
“We’re happy with how all the injured lads are recovering and we’re in the position where we should have a full squad to choose from in the very near future. Gary Fraser and Kallum Higginbotham are both recovering well and Sean Welsh has been training with us and is just lacking a bit of match fitness really.”
