Saturday 17th February, 2018 at 6:42pm
With the Scottish Premiership split edging ever closer, points are becoming more and more valuable. Partick Thistle still face a race for survival but had the chance to move into eighth position with victory over Dundee this afternoon. The Jags started well and dominated the first half, even taking the lead through Conor Sammon just ahead of the break. However, a second half resurgence from the visiting Dark Blues came to a head as two Simon Murray goals in the last ten minutes gave Neil McCann’s side the victory. The defeat means Thistle remain in tenth, just a point above the relegation play-off spot. Jags boss, Alan Archibald spoke to ptfc.co.uk after the match.
Archie began by giving us his summary of a turbulent 90 minutes in Maryhill.
“I thought overall we merited the victory but if you defend like we did in that final ten minutes then you’re always leaving yourself open to late goals. We dominated the first half and were good value for the lead at half-time but we had other good chances which we passed up and that came back to bite us. At the end of the day, we let ourselves down with the way we played late on and we have no one to blame but ourselves.”
The gaffer then spoke to us about the two late goals that Dundee scored which he thought were avoidable.
“The first one is a quick turnover in possession. Abdul Osman feels he’s fouled but nothing is given and they go on to score from it. Their player actually seems to drag a shot and Murray is alert to that. The second is the more disappointing one from my perspective because it’s just a corner. Dundee somehow manage to get two free men in the box which leads to Caulker’s chance. They perhaps get a bit of luck as the ball then falls to Murray but we shouldn’t have let it get anywhere near that far.”
Alan ended by telling us of the increased importance of the next two games against Hamilton and Ross Count after Thistle dropped all three points today.
“Without a doubt, the games become even more important. Beforehand, they were big fixtures but they’re now massive for us as we can’t afford to drop more points against those around us. We put a lot into the game today but we can’t let it overwhelm us; we have to regroup and prepare for the upcoming games. We’ve got a good group of players and there is still plenty of quality in the team so we will be ready for the fight to survive.”
As Archie touched on, there’s no time to dwell for his Jags as they face another tough test against a bottom six rival when they travel to Hamilton to take on Martin Canning’s Accies side. Kick-off is 15:00 from the SuperSeal Stadium.
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