Friday 19th September, 2014 at 6:52pm
Confidence is high in the camp following Saturday’s win against Inverness and it was a happy, relxed looking Alan Archibald who joined ptfc.co.uk to preview Friday night’s game – the first of a league and cup double header against St Mirren.
Alan said: “It’s been a great week, really positive. There’s nothing better than to come in on a Monday having had a good result and good performance from the boys on a Saturday. The boys have been in good form all week and we’re looking forward to another home game and hopefully we can go and build on it.
“We spoke to the guys straight after the Inverness game – in fact it was the first thing we said to them, we can’t go from beating Ross County comfortably and playing like we did on Saturday to losing game we were ahead in with five minutes to go. We have to get a level of consistency to our game and the home match tomorrow gives us the perfect opportunity to do that.
“So far we haven’t had the problem we had last year with getting results at home, but we need to take the results we’re getting at Firhill and build on them. Winning back to back games and climbing up the league is the only way to do that.”
St Mirren’s poor run of form is well publicised but Archie is only focussed on his team’s performance.
“It happened to us at times last season as well, bad runs happen and they aren’t nice when they do, no matter who you are. Having said that St Mirren’s poor run is going to come to an end at some point and we just need to make sure it isn’t against us.
“The St Mirren games that I’ve analysed so far this season haven’t been games that they have played poorly in, I just don’t think they have had the luck so far. A win gives us the chance to move 10 points ahead of them which is a great cushion at this stage of the season.”
Archie is clear in his aims and wants to be able to start looking up the table rather than just over his shoulder the whole time.
“We spent a lot of last season focussed on the teams below us and I want everyone at the club to be looking up this season, trying to catch the teams above us. A win on Friday night would put us in a great position to achieve that.”
Finally we checked in with the gaffer for his all important team news.
“One of the young boys, Declan McDaid, picked up a knock on Tuesday night in the development squad game. Conrad Balatoni has a niggling hamstring injury that he’s trying to shake and Sean Welsh remains sidelined but is making good progress. Nathan Eccleston trained for the latter part of this week and has a chance of making the squad.”
