Saturday 4th November, 2017 at 8:12pm
Having gone three games unbeaten for the first time since the opening weekend of the league season, Partick Thistle travelled to Ibrox to take on Rangers as they searched for their maiden away win of the Ladbrokes Premiership season. The Jags played well in patches but individual errors and lapses in concentration were punished by the hosts and Thistle fell to a 3-0 defeat. The defeat sees Thistle remain in tenth on ten points going into the international break. Jags’ boss, Alan Archibald, spoke to ptfc.co.uk after the game.
Archie’s biggest disappointment was the manner with which Rangers got their goals as the Govan side cruised to a 3-0 victory.
“The result is disappointing but the goals we conceded were appalling and that’s probably the toughest part to take. We’ve kept two good clean sheets in our last two games and we didn’t make them work for the goals. No matter what’s happening behind the scenes, Rangers have talented players who will punish any mistakes you make and that’s what they did today.”
The gaffer also spoke about how the third goal changed the game. He made some formation changes during the break as his side looked to climb back into contention but less than two minutes into the second period, the Jags conceded a third all but ending the game realistically.
“At 2-0, the next goal is vital and we made some changes looking to get that next goal but Jordan Turnbull’s mistake came at a bad time, just after the interval which was a sore one. However, I have to give credit to the lads, they didn’t give up and they kept looking for something, even just a goal. We actually got into some decent areas in the second 45 but we lacked that killer touch.”
A poor defensive performance such as today’s may have some thinking that the Jags are slipping back into the bad habits that saw them fail to win in nine league games to start the season, however, Alan is looking for his players to learn from the problems today rather than beat themselves up over them.
“We had a good week last week but we all knew it would be tough coming here. We were looking for a better result than we got but we can’t let the heads go down. We can’t let those little bits of poor defending and decision-making creep back into our game. Now it’s all focus on the Hearts game after the break.”
The Thistle boss also touched on Gary Fraser’s return to the first team after a long absence having made his last first team appearance in April of last year.
“That was probably the big positive from the game. Getting Gary back on the pitch after so long out, getting him 20 minutes on the pitch was great. He’s an infectious character and it’s not been nice seeing him out for such a long period of time. Hopefully, the time on the pitch has done him some good and he can push on from here with some more Development League football on Tuesday.”
Archie and the Thistle squad now have some recovery time before they’re back in action. An international break means there is now two weeks until the Jags’ next fixture. That game comes in Edinburgh as Thistle travel to Hearts for a Ladbrokes Premiership clash. Kick-off is 15:00 in the capital.
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Article Copyright © 2017. Permission to use quotations from this article online is only granted subject to appropriate source credit and hyperlink to ptfc.co.uk.
