Leaderboard

First day back at work today after a long Birthday weekend. Received a card, signed poster, cake and present. All presented by the great man himself. A wonderful surprise. Big thank you to Mr Charnley and those that organised it. Legends all.

Very enjoyable day out in a relaxed location. Great for those with young children, as you could wander about anywhere and the grassy bank on the far side from the stand was nicely angled to provide an excellent view. First half we were very sound defensively with Bud in goal and Ashcroft and O'Reilly at centre back mopping up everything. Reading looks a good acquisition at left back. You could see that he was an experienced player who knew what to do. Trialist right back (Cammy Logan?) also impressed and took his goal very well with a shot into the roof of the net when anything lower might have been saved or blocked. Lawless looked up for it. McKay eased himself back in to playing football with some nice touches. He was not particularly penetrating but did combine neatly with Falconer to set him up for the first goal. Main disappointments in the first half were Diack, who kept falling over and never got into the game, and Mackenzie. I was willing Zander to do well in centre midfield, but he kept losing possession. Second half was a different game entirely with mainly a different team. The young goalkeeper Cameron has a bit to do yet to become a confidence inspiring back up for Bud, and sadly was at fault for the Glenafton goal, allowing himself to be dispossessed by their striker, who trundled the ball into the net. McBeth tried to co-ordinate the defence, but there were some shaky moments with his young colleagues. Further up the park we were much sharper in midfield and attack, Stanway was very prominent in winning possession and driving the team forward, and seemed to be embracing a leadership role. Fitzpatrick had one electrifying burst where he ate up ground on a defender, but was a bit quiet apart from that. Chalmers was excellent and the go to player through whom most effective attacks were directed. To me the main and perhaps surprising encouragement was young Thomas Horn at centre forward. Unlike Diack, he gave the defence no peace and was up and at them the whole time. Took his goal brilliantly, powering past the goalkeeper and firing home confidently from a challenging angle. Unlucky not to score more. It would be great to see him really kick on this season. Not the most robust of games, just an understandably gentle easing in, but several encouraging signs to keep us all optimistic!

On a lighter note, a couple of decades ago, my daughter, then at school, was given a homework assignment to take an article from a newspaper and explain more about the story to the rest of the class. With perfect timing, she was able to choose an article entitled "No Rae of Sunshine at Firhill" or something similar, which told the story of Alex Rae scoring and then being sent off both as a player and a manager, and to give her own eye witness account.

It's unbelievable what TTA guys give us. Really too much for any one person to take in, But a truly incredible database of facts, lists, and descriptions. More power to your elbows (or fingertips), guys. All heroes!

https://queensparkfc.co.uk/mr-robert-reid/

Sad, sad news indeed. A class act of a man: intelligent, educated, polite, funny, sympathetic, helpful, and a greater, non-millionaire supporter of PTFC there can never have been. Thanks for the French and Latin classes, Mr Reid, and for the great chats we had in and around Firhill, and for your hilarious and entertaining Hospitality tours, which were always the highlight for those lucky enough to have attended. I doubt if he realized just how much he was treasured by so many people. RIP Condolences to all Robert's family and friends.

Personally I found the stewarding rather heavy handed https://legionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/owens1.jpg

As FT has said, the PTWFC pledge is a minimum of £5k per season. Last year we honoured this through five £1,000 payments staggered across the season. We've made the first of these for 2025-26 already and the plan would presumably be to do the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th in September, November, January and March (or thereabouts). The cumulative figures to date in terms of financial support across pledges, donations and sponsorship are: £397k to the Football Club (£170k in season 2024-25) £38k to the Youth Academy (£24k in season 2024-25) £11k to PTWFC (£7k in season 2024-25). £446k in total in just over 3 years (and significant financial support to the Club only really started properly in early 2023). The figures £170k and £7k above are higher than the respective year-long pledge totals (£150k and £5k) because of supplementary fundraising (mainly last year around the hospitality takeovers and Foundation shirt-related raffles/auctions). Additionally, the Foundation has about £55k of cash reserves and has made (cumulatively) about £7k of support to various community causes, including (indeed mainly) those spearheaded by or partnered with Jags For Good and/or the PT Charitable Trust.

Petty bugbear but it will never not annoy me that the "reduced" price for season ticket holders is an £11.50 reduction rather than a reduction by the average price per game of an ST, immediately disincentivises it.

Seems the on-line Jags' world is having a go at anything Thistle do these days!

All the best to Robert, my ex French and Latin teacher! Here's a wee story (again): Back in season 70-71 we had a late afternoon kick-off match at Stranraer (they had no floodlights), and to get there it meant I had to dog school and miss my French lesson. I went on the NW bus, if I remember correctly. Outside Stair Park, as I was waiting in the queue at the turnstyle I heard "Hello, Anderson..." and turned to see Mr Reid looking at me, as he walked with a companion towards the stand, for which he surely had a complimentary ticket. Like me, he was dogging school that afternoon! We exchanged a kind of ""We'll say no more about this" glance. We met at many matches, home and away, over the years. Two other Jags diehard teachers from the same school were Hector McLeod and Ian Woodburn.

The target has now been reached Hopefully with 3 weeks before the first home league game the guys can get all the season tickets distributed to the various groups so they can be there from day 1. https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/redandyellowforall25

Let’sgo for Ts'Oanelo Lets'osa

Banging the same drum again but absolute embarrassment that Stranraer are putting this out on YouTube FOC. Once and for all let's get proper content on YouTube and stop with the BS JagsZone.

People on here need to cheer up. New manager New tactics New captain New younger squad New star striker Newly fit Stevie Lawless Good spine of team to build on New (2!) teams to play against Here we f'ing go

Maybe the idea behind this is to have anybody drinking in the stadium before the game to find it such a dismal and humiliating experience that the authorities will be able to say the scheme was piloted but it proved to be clearly unpopular, hence no demand for it.

I think we needed someone with Watt's profile and confidence to move on from Graham. Would have been a lot for young unknown striker to take over as main striker and then have some people compare to Graham. Watt is probably also the best of what we can get and I reckon every other team in the league bar maybe County who have potentially a better striker and St Johnstone who have too many strikers, would have taken him. He also adds pace and a bit of guile to our attack. If we are playing 4-2-3-1 a front four of Chalmers, Fitzpatrick, MacKay and Watt looks pretty quick although personally I think Lawless has shown in pre-season that he still a much more creative player. I would also hope that Watt realises that he's no longer a premier league player and we are probably at the top end of what he can now expect to get. So if he has a good season with us he'll still be able to make a decent living in football for a few more years. A bad year and he could quickly find himself on the scrap heap. Still need another midfielder, at least cover at rightback, 1 maybe 2 strikers, another keeper and possibly cover at centre-half and leftback. However we now have a reasonable starting 11 and probably enough of a team and options to go into the league cup with and perhaps have a little more time to get those players in. Also gives a fighting chance of getting through the group stage of the league cup and potentially getting prize money that could be used to increase the playing budget.

I like both the Home and the Third Kit. We have certainly raised our game with O'Neil. Different class compared to Joma!

I think Logan has deserved his offer. Here's hoping everything works out.

I don’t see why Brian has to justify his decision to anyone. He applied for a job, was offered it and in the interim was offered another job which he thought was more beneficial to his future. Why all the fuss ?

Also worth remembering on the past Alex had well publicised battles with alcoholism (sadly as many have) which of course may well understandably have affected his temperament. However absolutely delighted to see that he appears to have beaten it (which is no easy task) and will have a fresh perspective nowadays as will his experience at so many different clubs. As has been mentioned he is very close to Mark Wilson as well so I think it’s an ideal choice as assistant and goes without saying I hope Mark and Alex are a great success Welcome Alex and all the best at Firhill

The decision was entirely Brian Graham's to make. These things are never easy, I'm sure he had a lot to weigh up. But he doesn't have to justify it to anyone. Good luck to him. No one can deny that he worked really hard for Thistle. He gave it everything and that's all we can ask as fans. He was a very good striker for us, and had a huge positive influence on the women's team. If he's decided it's best to move on then that's the right decision for everyone.

A mixed reception for Reading, Budinauckas and Rae. With regard to the two players they look decent and sensible signings to me. As far as Rae is concerned I think this is a positive signing. I preferred Wilson over Graham for a number of reasons that I have already expressed. Rae, though not a particularly popular individual, has always to me seemed totally committed to what he does. If we ever wanted someone to toughen up the Jags both physically and mentally, well we have that person now. Definitely a culture change in the offing at Firhill. I think Rae's qualities sit well with Wilson"s and they should make a good team. As with all signings time will tell. Must go and get my season ticket now.

Stop being reasonable. There is no place on this forum for sensible non judgemental posting like this. Patience isn’t permitted and there is no where in your post where you laid blame on a senior position at Firhill.

Fitzy looks to have slimmed himself down over the summer. By his own admission he had a poor last season (with off field issues to contend with). Hoping he can rediscover his previous exciting form this season and push on. Incredible to think he could hit 200 appearances this season and he’s only 24 years old.

£380 so only a mere £70 away from premium sponsorship. Having a strip & hospitality places = 2 prizes up for offer in the draw. Can we get to the target before Monday?

Highlights (from ECTV) now up on Youtube:

Don’t think people should be getting on McKays back .Young Lad has had a terrible injury and must have been really hard for him over the last year . If he has had setback you can only imagine what he is going through - including worrying about his own future etc .

Back in February 2024, we introduced an early version of the 'Thistle Honours' tab to Peter Lindau's page and, since then, we've been teasing improved versions here and there. Today, as the new League Cup campaign gets underway, we're delighted to announce the full roll out of the newly completed feature for all players who qualify. Using our PTFC honours list as the qualifying base, honours are awarded to any player who has contributed an appearance in any given tournament in any given campaign. As you can see from the screenshot below, the honours list page is now split with two tab options, one for the club overview, and one for the player's overview. 70 club honours are shared between 598 players resulting in 1139 individual honours. Via our new fully sortable table, you can drill down to the honours breakdown per player by clicking their name and selecting the 'Thistle Honours' tab on their profile page. On a more general note, the full roll out of these new tabs gives a handy reference point for all the players, anytime you happen to casually land on their profile page. Check it out... Partick Thistle FC honours list →

I am not really qualified to comment, as a pre-game alcoholic drink is not part of my standard matchday experience, but I cannot see the attraction of this for those who do like a drink before the game. Would you not prefer to stay in the Woodie or Munns or even the Aitken Suite or wherever, in a comfortable and convivial atmosphere, until (say) half an hour before kick off and then wander along to the game. What is the incentive to enter the ground at least an hour before kick off to stand and have a drink out of sight of the pitch and then hang around until the match begins? Maybe I am missing something here and remain to be enlightened.

I’m in. I will be on the crossbar at half time if anyone wants me.

M'Lady might be interested to learn that when entered into a Fisher's Exact Test contingency table and the test applied, the difference is indeed statistically significant at p = 0.0032. But whether that fact will prove significant in real life is indeed anybody's [add your own adjective] guess.

Just a couple of points. We've now got a first strip and a third strip. Where's the away strip? Secondly, are we in for a prize for the angriest looking players who get told to model the new strips?

And the little suspense that there was is gone 😂

Agree with @lady-isobel-barnett that we can be quite fixated on formations such as 4-2-3-1, 3-5-2 etc when in reality they are only really starting positions. From what what I have seen in the 2 friendlies so far Wilson is changing the nature of how the fullbacks play. We have for the last few seasons been used to seeing overlapping fullbacks when we have possession so that it creates overloads in wide area's. To my mind it was noticeable against Glenafton and against ICT that Wilson is looking for the fullbacks to either underlap or be more central and almost become the midfield allowing the likes of Stanway and Crawford to make runs into the box and get beyond the strikers. In theory pulls a wide defender into central area's and leaves our wingers with more space and a 1v1 against the opposition fullback which in turn makes us less predictable in attack and less reliant on a striker for goals. Second half of the ICT game showed this particularly when Lowe and Logan were our fullbacks. Logan is very good at making underlapping runs, Lowe is pretty good on the ball and able to pick a pass and put in a decent cross. Harkness tried to play as an overlapping fullback putting more pressure on our weak midfield and whilst Reading was trying to underlap Fitzpatrick he's not as good as Low on the ball and got caught in possession a couple of times. So if we are looking at formations against ICT we looked more like a 2-3-2-3 when we had the ball with occasional periods where either Logan, Stanway or Crawford would go further forward and we end up with almost 5 up front but people finding space in the defensive channels rather than just out wide and overloading the fullback. Downside is that if an opposition can break quickly they will find space in wide areas which will in turn mean our centre backs getting pulled wide. So might not be the worst thing to have a centre back play as CDM who can drop in central in that scenario and immediately have 3 at the back. Where I think the issues are is that I'm not convinced Reading can play in that system as he looks more like a wingback who can carry the ball but struggles with delivery and on defensive duties. Low looks better in possession but still not got the physicality required for the defensive work. Whilst we become less reliant on a striker to score goals we need a striker with better movement to create spaces for the advanced midfielders to exploit. For our wingers to exploit the 1v1's requires them to have a few tricks which I think only Chalmers and Lawless truly have as Fitzpatrick and MacKay are more about pace. Conversely we need the wingers to have pace to cover back quickly and Lawless doesn't have that. I would also add that we will be asking O'Reilly and Ashcroft to do a lot more quick changes of direction so we might well find they start to pick up more injuries than last season. I like Dolan and I think he can cope with first team football but we might still need another centre half for cover

£24 for match entry for two, 2 pies, a poke of chips and 2 bottles of water. Bargain! And a decent game in lovely sunshine. Lee Ashcroft employing the John Lambie school of motivation . 😁

Someone on P&B says RB is Jack Harkness. Rangers lad. Not the Torchwood guy.

Charlie Smith- Alex Forsyth behind him - Hugh Strachan Jackie Campbell Rough John Gibson Jimmy Bone and Tommy Rae

Presumably the AI bot was not fed any JagZone interviews or it would have scattered the odd "Listen" here and there.

Thanks for that. To me that article is full of gobbledygook: buzzwords, verbosity, and mangled meaning. I STILL don't know what the "uniquely hybrid" model really means. At least now I know what it doesn't mean (I think): it doesn't mean that the women's team will be a mix of full-time and part-time players, and it doesn't mean that the women's team will be a mix of women and men who want to be known as women.

Looks OK to me (though I prefer hoops).

It has been a good addition in my opinion but when you put something out you need to make sure it is followed up. The Fan/Media Event at Greaves - to be confirmed by Friday 20th June, yet Friday comes and goes without anything about this.

I am happy to give Alex Rae a clean slate. He does seem to have calmed down and is able to laugh at himself, which is always a healthy trait. HIs midfield experience should be especially useful and relevant. I do not think he would have signed up unless he thought that we were going to be reasonably competitive this season.

Any man that lifts a major tophy for Thistle is OK by me but surely he is getting on a bit now.

I do think with st Johnstone and Ross county battling it out for promotion ( no other team in the league stand a chance ) this is the time for the team to go through a transition . Feels like the core of the team that has made the play offs the last few years is breaking up and rebuild needed . Key will be getting the right mixture of youth and experience to ensure that we don’t get pulled too near the bottom - very easy in this small league - as the rebuild will take at least 1/2 years . Patience will be required by all .

I think this is a good point. We seem to get young players to be part of the first team squad but then limit their development by not having a clear idea of what the next step is from squad member to first team started. In recent times Mackenzie has suffered from being used to fill in at a number of positions rather than getting him out on loan to a team that would play him in his regular position with the hope he returns a season later ready to compete for that position. Diack similarly looked ready to go out on loan a couple of seasons ago but we kept him around as 3rd choice striker and started to force him into positions that he's not really built for. Last seasons loan to Airdrie was a start but Championship level is probably a bit too much for him to restore his confidence. Unfortunately with his injury it looks like he won't get a loan until January again. Stanway has progressed further but has had the chance to go on loan and has never really been put in any other position than midfield which has probably aided his development. So in my mind the the big issue with our development of players is not getting them regular game time in their preferred position when they have shown they are too good for youth football but not quite ready for the first eleven. The only real way to address that is to get them out on loan to a club that will play them. Perhaps if we had a co-operation arrangement with a Dumbarton or Stirling we might bridge that gap