Wednesday 8th April, 2015 at 10:27am
Despite the defeat it was a proud Alan Archibald who spoke with ptfc.co.uk shortly after full time, having seen his side put in a brave, battling performance at Celtic Park.
“I was proud of the lads for the way they organised themselves. Their shape was as good as it has been for the last three or four weeks with a lot of clean sheets. I thought you could see that tonight. We kept our shape and discipline, even though we were down to 10 men, and limited the number of chances Celtic had.”
“I’m just disappointed because I thought we’d done the hard bit in the first half. We’d got over the first 10 to 15 minutes where they had a fair few chances. They had started taking shots from 25 yards so I thought we’d got over the hard bit.”
The game turned on a penalty decision that saw James Craigen sent off for a last man challenge on Stuart Armstrong. We asked Alan for his thoughts.
“I thought it was a penalty at the time but I haven’t watched it back yet. James has gone in thinking he’s going to get a foot on the ball. In hindsight you’d either let the striker score or give Foxy the chance to save the shot but in the heat of the moment you always think you’re going to get there. “
“It’s a hard one for James. He’s been very good in recent weeks, got himself back in the team and worked every so hard so it’s going to be a sore one for him to take.”
Thistle face Motherwell next in a vital game that could help ease playoff nerves with the split looming.
“We’ve been on a good run ourselves but Motherwell and Ross County have also been on good runs so we’ve never really been away from it. The other two teams have been in very good form, hats off to them for that, and we’re looking forward to Saturday.”
Despite defeat Alan was able to take plenty of positives from the game.
“I thought we showed good character and organisation. Our discipline was good tonight and we came to Celtic Park and created chances. There are lots of positives to take from it and we look forward to playing Motherwell on Saturday.”
