Monday 10th September, 2018 at 10:40am
One man keen to make an impact against East Fife on Saturday was Kris Doolan after a contentious call denied him his first goal of the season one week prior against Greenock Morton. Although Kris couldn’t grab that elusive first strike of the season, he was able to set up Thistle’s only goal of the game as his smart flick unleashed Andréa Mbuyi-Mutombo with the Belgian-born attacker bagging a third goal in four games. Unfortunately for the Jags number nine, his assist wasn’t to be part of a Thistle win as a spirited East Fife comeback saw the Bayview side knock the Maryhill men out of the Irn-Bru Cup. Partick Thistle Club captain, Doolan spoke to ptfc.co.uk following his side’s elimination.
Kris began by directly addressing Thistle’s second half performance which he admitted was nowhere near good enough.
“The second 45 minutes were shocking from our point of view and there’s no getting away from it. The manager spoke, at half time, about treating the second half properly and maintaining a certain intensity but we did the exact opposite. Our play was slow and lethargic; there was no incision or drive and ultimately that meant that East Fife deserved to win.”
The experienced forward said that it was particularly frustrating that the Jags let their hosts back into the game early in the second half after a relatively comfortable opening 45.
“We knew they were going to go for it in the second half. It’s another thing we spoke about at half time. They’re 1-0 down at home in a cup game, they were never going to just sit in and let us dominate but even though we knew that, we didn’t deal with it at all. We let them get on top of us right after the break and they just grew in confidence from there.”
Doolan then spoke about what cup elimination means for Thistle league prospects as the Jags can now focus on Championship action between now and the Scottish Cup’s return in January.
“The aim now has to be to put a consistent run together in the league. We’ve been poor away from home so far this season and that has to improve. Obviously, we would have loved a cup run but we now know that we have a stretch of games during which we can focus on climbing that table and finding a bit of form.”
That run of games between now and January begins this Saturday as the Maryhill men travel to the Highlands for the first time this season and Kris knows that bouncing back from cup disappointment immediately is key.
“It’s very important that we don’t let this result knock our season off the rails. We played well against Morton and deservedly won so we have to be looking to build on that rather than dwelling on this shock for too long. We need to pick ourselves up because the games won’t wait and our response to this game starts with training through the week building towards a very tough away fixture.”
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