Friday 8th January, 2021 at 2:02pm
There will be a 9am pitch inspection held at Firhill on matchday ahead of our Scottish Cup tie with Cowdenbeath. We will keep supporters updated of the outcome of the inspection when it is confirmed.
Since Darren Brownlie and Mouhamed Niang played their first game together as a central defensive partnership, Partick Thistle have played six and conceded just once. Overall, the Jags have the best defensive record in League One and they’ll look to carry that form into the Scottish Cup as Cowdenbeath visit Firhill. It will be a particularly interesting clash for Brownlie who spent a season and a half with the Blue Brazil, beginning in January of 2014, and the number five spoke to ptfc.co.uk ahead of the tie:
“The cup is always a good opportunity. It’s been league game after league game for a few months now and this will just give a bit of something different but we can’t underestimate Cowdenbeath. It’s a one-off game and they’ll come to Firhill looking to claim a scalp so we’ll have to be completely focused to get that win and progress to the next round.”
Coming up against his former team, for whom he made 42 appearances, Brownlie says he owes a lot to the Central Park side.
“At first I left Thistle on loan to get first team football and it was actually Archie who encouraged me to go and do that. Jimmy Nicholl was the Cowdenbeath manager at the time and he gave me that opportunity and I got a good number of games in that time and we managed to stay up in the Championship through the play-offs which was a great achievement.”
“I’ll always be thankful to Cowden. At the time, they had a few experienced boys in there but also, we were down near the bottom of the table so there was quite a lot of defending to do which I think also aided my development.”
Reflecting on Thistle’s current defensive successes, Darren says the recent clean sheets have been a real team effort.
“You need everyone in the XI doing their bit and we’ve had that as of late. Even going away to Falkirk, we limited them pretty well and despite going down to ten men, we had a relatively comfortable end to the game so that’s a credit to everyone on the pitch.
“As a defence, we feel secure and feel like we can trust the players beside us which is a big thing. Sena has been excellent next to me as has Richard Foster at left-back and then against Falkirk, Ciaran McKenna came back in and even though he was playing out of position, he didn’t look out of place at all so we’re all just aiming to keep this sort of form going at the back.”
Weather has had an effect on the early going of 2021 with our year opener against Clyde being called off due to a frozen pitch but Brownlie says it’s just one of those things in football.
“It’s not ideal obviously, it’s stopped us from playing the Clyde game and it’s also disrupted training a little bit for us but you just have to get on with it. It’ll have been the same story for a lot of clubs in Scotland at the moment so you just have to make the best of it. We’ve worked hard in training and will be ready for this cup game and then the league games we have to follow.”
More exclusive preview interviews with Thistle assistant manager Alan Archibald and Blair Spittal will be available for JagZone subscribers to watch today – log in to view.
JagZone subscribers will be able to tune in to live audio commentary for the fixture – click here to tune in
There will also be a pay-per-view option, priced at £10, for our live stream of the match – click here for more info.
We’ll have extended highlights and a full game replay of our match against Cowdenbeath on JagZone following the game.
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