Saturday 15th February, 2014 at 2:42pm
Just six minutes separated Thistle from what would have been a vitally important three points. However, two late Motherwell goals consigned Thistle to a heart breaking 4-3 defeat; the pain of that defeat being all too clear on the manager’s face when he spoke after the game.
Said Alan;
“I thought that we deserved at least a point. I thought our play in the second half would have merited that but it was our Achilles heel all season that came back to haunt us. It’s very, very frustrating. I thought that they had dealt well with Motherwell all day. I thought that the back four did extremely well against the threat of John Sutton, up until the last five minutes.”
A scintillating second half display from Kallum Higginbotham looked set to bring Thistle maximum points and there was praise for Kallum, who scored twice, from his manager.
“Kallum was very good. He was playing against his old team and sometimes it can be a bit hit or miss when that happens. Today Kallum was a hit. I thought that he took the game by the scruff of the neck in the second half and had a right go at them and I thought that he was outstanding.”
The fact that the sides immediately around Thistle in the league also lost was of scant consolation to a deeply disappointed Thistle manager.
“It isn’t really any comfort to us that the teams around us all lost as with five minutes to go we were on course to make up three points on them all. Scoring three goals at Fir Park should be enough to win the game; not many sides have done that this season.”
Alan continued;
“The players just have to man up; we’ve said that to them. They’re not young boys any more, they are experienced enough now. We’re now in the middle of February, nearing the end of the season, and the young naive thing that we have been tagged with doesn’t apply anymore. Yes, they are young but they need to start learning. This can’t keep on happening. We go over this with them, we tell them about it all the time and that they have jobs to do. They need to learn to manage the game. At 3-2 up they need to manage the game and see it out. Motherwell are a very good team and we knew that they would come strongly at us. It was a shame that we had to make subs as we had a couple of knocks and that probably did affect us in the last five minutes.”
