Friday 18th December, 2020 at 4:00pm
With Kieran Wright winning the November McCrea Mortgages Player of the Month award and Mouhamed Niang earning himself a new contract, Darren Brownlie has been something of an unsung hero in Thistle’s recent defensive successes. The former Cowdenbeath defender has played the full 90 minutes in all five of the Jags consecutive clean sheets and latterly has formed a formidable partnership with the aforementioned Niang. Now as Peterhead come to Maryhill, the Jags have the opportunity to extend their recent god run and Brownlie spoke to ptfc.co.uk before the match:
“We’ve been enjoying these past few games. We feel really secure at the back and I think you can tell that from the amount of saves Kieran has actually made since that Morton game. We’re making it difficult for other teams to get shots in and that’s giving us a really good platform to go and play off at the moment.
“Going into every game our aim as defenders is to keep clean sheets and we’ve been able to do that recently which is great but we know we can’t get complacent. We need to keep our focus because as soon as those concentration levels drop that’s when you’ll get punished.”
As mentioned above, Mouhamed Niang signed a contract extension with the club this week and Darren says he’s very pleased for the 21-year-old who has worked hard since dropping back into the rear-guard.
“It’s great for Sena, of course. He’s done really well since he came into the defence and hasn’t looked out of place at all. He’s does the basics very well like challenging in the air and he’s a very good tackler too so it’s been a joy to play alongside him and he’s fully deserved his new deal.”
The number five also gave a mention to Ross Docherty and Stuart Bannigan who, as the teams two central midfielder, have offered a vital layer of protection in front of the back four.
“Having those two in front of us is a massive bonus. They’re both players who will run up and down the pitch all day long and aren’t scared of getting stuck in but the biggest thing is the way they dictate the play and hold on to the ball. It means the opposition don’t have as many opportunities to get at us and these past two games in particular we’ve been on top of the game for pretty much the full 90 minutes which is fantastic.”
Although Kieran Wright hasn’t had much to do in terms of saves recently, Brownlie has been very impressed by the other aspects of the youngster’s game.
“The way Kieran communicates is brilliant. He’s a very young goalkeeper and some guys his age might be a bit scared to have a go at the more experienced players but if there’s something going wrong, he makes sure to let us know about it and I think that goes both ways. Everyone is trying to push each other to be at our best and that mentality is a good thing to have.”
One area where Darren is hoping to produce more going forward is goalscoring. The centre-half is still waiting on his first Thistle goal and hopes it’ll come soon having gone very close against Dumbarton a fortnight ago.
“Yeah, I’d love to get a couple of goals and I probably should have scored against Dumbarton but it was just past the post. Every time I go up for a set piece, the gaffer is in my ear about going and attacking it to get that goal so I’d love to get one sooner rather than later.”
More exclusive preview interviews with Thistle assistant manager Neil Scally and James Penrice 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 this weekend’s fixture – click here to tune in
There will also be a pay-per-view option, priced at £10, for non-season ticket holders who wish to watch 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 Peterhead on JagZone this Saturday evening.
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