Tuesday 2nd April, 2013 at 9:39pm
The performance at Stark’s Park on Tuesday night wasn’t the greatest of the season but the point gained could yet prove to be hugely significant come the end of the season. Manager Alan Archibald was certainly in no doubt that it had been a good point when he spoke to [link:HOME] after the game.
“It was a brilliant point, I don’t think there is any doubt about that especially as we didn’t turn up for the best part of 60 minutes. Until the sending off I don’t think that we played at all. It was like a wake up call for them and after that I thought that we started to play a bit. They started to pass the ball, they worked hard and started to create chances and they never did any of that while we had eleven men. It’s hard to be too critical of them though because they have been absolutely outstanding. We knew how hard it was going to be here so we were under no illusions about how difficult it was going to be. It was a strange one. ”
Alan continued;
“I said to them before the game; don’t wait for something to happen to make you go and play, make things happen yourself. They obviously didn’t listen to that. It took the sending off for them to think that they needed to work harder, pass the ball and play; and that’s what they did. The performance in the last 25 minutes was much more like the performances we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks; it was like night and day.”
Jordan McMillan slotted into the position vacated by Aaron Muirhead following his red card and the manager was pleased with Jordan’s contribution on his Thistle debut.
“I thought Jordan did really well and was a calming influence at the back. Although he is young he’s played a lot of games at a high level. He slotted in well and I think he showed how important it was that we signed him. We were always aware that we need to bring someone in. I’m struggling, Paul Paton’s struggling, Hugh Murray is also injured and we needed to replace David Rowson. So it was always my plan to get someone in, and it’s good that someone of Jordan’s calibre became available. Otherwise it would have been a younger type of player on an Emergency Loan that we would have been looking at.”
Could we look back at the point gained in this match as being significant come the season’s end.
“I thought that when Kris Doolan scored a late goal here earlier in the season. I think Raith Rovers showed on Saturday how difficult a place Stark’s Park is to go to as they gave Morton a bit of a going over.”
Although this game wasn’t won the manager was delighted with the points return from three successive away games.
“We had those three games in Fife in the space of a week and I don’t think anyone would have thought that we would have taken seven points from those games. We’ve no complaints about seven points from nine especially as they were all away from home and we kept another clean sheet tonight which is another positive.”
With six games to go our destiny lies very much within our own hands. Said Alan;
“I think that it has always been in our own hands. Because we won our games in hand and drew tonight it’s in our own hands. The players know that and they know that we can’t have a repeat of the first 55 minutes tonight too often as another side might have punished us.”
Can we now start to look forward to Sunday’s Ramsdens Cup Final?
“We can now. The players are in tomorrow and then they have a day off and when they are back in we can start planning to face a very good Queen of the South side. I’ve not managed to see them live as we’ve had so many games but I’ve watched a few dvds of them as well as having them watched and getting reports on them. They are very good going forward and there are a lot of similarities to ourselves. They play with a lot of confidence and they move the ball about. It’s going to be a tough match.”
Alan added;
“There should be a great atmosphere. Everyone at the Club and all the Thistle fans you meet are all really looking forward to it. The fans are going to turn up in numbers for this game but they turned up in numbers for tonight’s game as well. To be honest I think they helped get us over the line tonight and get us a point; they were very, very noisy. They’ve been like that all season and hopefully we can put on a show for them on Sunday.”
