Wednesday 3rd December, 2014 at 10:09am
After a hard fought match for Thistle Alan Archibald took a lot of positives from Wednesday night’s game against Celtic, even though the match ultimately ended in defeat.
“I thought we did well and frustrated Celtic at times. Gal is going to have to make saves in a game like that and he did have to pull off some top class stops – but we expected that and he did his job very very well.
“We settled quickly into the game and kept it tight for the first 15 or 20 minutes. That first quarter of the game is all important and if you concede early it’s easy for heads to drop, but we didn’t do that today which I was pleased to see.”
Although Thistle came under heavy pressure at times, it certainly wasn’t a backs to the wall job and Archie was pleased with how the ball was passed around at times.
“I was quite happy with how we passed the ball at times and that made us a couple of decent chances. Abdul had one in the first half from a header where perhaps he should have done better.
“There’s no doubt there were positives to take from that performance tonight but it was disappointing that the goal we lost was a scrappy one and we should have done better with it. We were a bit too deep and we should defend it better at the first time of asking – I think that’s probably the biggest frustration of the night.
“Having said that I thought our attitude tonight was very good. It’s easy to come here and just sit right in and defend but we didn’t do that tonight. We tried to play when we could and I think we caused them a few problems as well.”
It was a different looking back four as Conrad Balatoni came in for the injured Frederic Frans and Aaron Muirhead got a late call to replace Dan Seaborne who phoned in with a sickness bug.
“There were three boys missing from Saturday’s line up and the two defenders were late call offs as well so I was really pleased with how Aero and Conrad came in did. Considering how little time they had to prepare I thought they did ever so well.”
Some of the travelling support thought the Jags had nicked a point late on as an acrobatic effort from Kris Doolan was well saved by Celtic custodian, Craig Gordon.
“It was a good cross into the box and Doolan did well to get the effort away. That just shows the quality of Craig Gordon though. He has pretty much been a spectator for most of the game and pulls out a world class save in the last five or so minutes to make sure they took all three points.”
