All going well, Thistle’s Federation League campaign should finish at Childers Road Reserve on September 16.
Jags coach Garrett Blair said Thistle should be close to full strength tomorrow.
Midfielder Hugo Elwood, who was ill with Covid-19 last Saturday, trained on Tuesday and should be fit to play tomorrow. Central defender Ryan Noon, who came off with a knock to his left leg in the City Rovers game, was expected to train last night and Blair hoped he would be fit to start tom
The shock of last week’s scoreline could be the fillip Thistle need for a late-season surge. With their games in hand, they could still finish in the top three of the five-team league; top two is mathematically possible.
“Going into a game against the top-of-the-table team, we need to be as defensively sound as possible,” Blair said yesterday.
“The Rovers game was not a shining example of being defensively strong. It’s about re-evaluating what our weaknesses are and looking to plug those gaps.
“It’s not necessarily the other team completely outplaying us; a lot of the time it’s our own mistakes letting us down.
“We’ve talked about going back to basics, keeping it as simple as possible and working together.”
Blair said it had been common for opponents to overload the midfield against Thistle.
“Quite often we’ve been bypassing our midfield which, in my opinion, is a waste because we have fantastic midfielders who can contribute with the ball.
“For us to win that midfield battle we have to almost one-up the opposition and put more players in there.”
Those players would have to be pulled from elsewhere, and the key would be to do that without weakening the team structure.
“We want to create a really strong ‘spine’ . . . it might mean sacrificing a bit of width up top (in attack) but that’s not necessarily a bad thing when you look at the potential of Jimmy Somerton and Campbell Hall operating together.”
Part of their plans would concern counteracting the threat of players like striker Melvin Rumere and “wily old dog” Adam Cowan.
“If we don’t keep an eye on Cowan, he is likely to pop up in places we don’t want him to pop up in,” Blair said.
“I think it’s going to be a cracker of a game.”
Asked about several depressions in the No.1 pitch at the Childers Road Reserve, Blair said the state of the ground following the heavy rain this year had been a concern all season.
“Those depressions in the ground have become more and more noticeable,” he said. “The drainage is failing. Before every game the referee inspects the pitch, and I know a couple of games have been moved for player safety reasons.”
When games had gone ahead, the pitch had been assessed and deemed safe, but he worried about the possibility of a player running into softer ground and “doing their ankle”.
The ground would probably require substantial work to fix and would not be cheap.
“The council is fully across what’s required and it’s up to them to find the dollars.”
