partickthedog

What happened last season?

He could be a hero. Whatever happened to Ziggy Gordon?

Hi EEJ. Thanks for the quiz. This is top of the head stuff to get the ball rolling. I am relying on memory supplemented by guesswork and have not checked any of the answers which are probably mostly wrong! 1) Tommy Bryce and No Idea-Stephen Kenny or Dick Campbell?? 2) Presuming it is not Joe Cardle or Ryan Williamson. Wild stab at Kyle Turner. 3) Not a clue. Go for 10. 4) Celtic, Wolves and Falkirk I am pretty sure of. Will go for Hearts or Hibs, but I have a feeling that they are both wrong. 5) I think that it was a pretty horrible defeat and that Stevie Crawford pulled us apart. 4-0 to the Pars? Hoping to score more than nul points.

It has been very difficult to form any impression of Jake Hastie as unfortunately he was cup-tied and could not play in any of our Challenge Cup fixtures. In every League game he has come on, it seems to me that we have either been so far ahead or so far behind that it has been virtually impossible for him to influence the result. Would I be correct in saying that Jake has never been on the pitch when the margin between the two sides is less than two goals?

Seems to be our usual pattern of dominating first 20 minutes and then progressively falling out of the game. Hope we can get back on it at start of second half.

Can anyone watching on TV tell me what happened with the goal. Impossible to tell from the far end!

Struggling to remember too, but I think it related to that awful 3-1 home loss to Ross County in the second season after promotion. Thistle not only played poorly but several players displayed a bad attitude. Stevie said something like “Time for a change of scenery”. I think that he had been left on the bench and this reflected similar comments from an unhappy Nathan Ecclestone who had left Thistle a few weeks previously.. There were rumours that Archie had lost the dressing room. In true Thistle fashion, the team turned the situation on its head the next week in a brilliant 2-0 win at Tannadice, including Stephen O”Donnell’s wonder goal.

I was there last night. We struggled a little with the surface, but generally had slightly the better of matters and looked the more likely scorers in the first half. Second half more even until they scored. Our major problem was a constant punting of high floaty balls from the back. Tunji is my favourite player, but he was the worst culprit. The one time he carried the ball forward right into the guts of their defence, we really opened them up, and I was hoping that he would do it again. In an ideal world, their striker should have been closed down earlier, but you could not argue with the quality of that goal. To be fair on MacIver, thing began to happen when he came on. He had some good head flicks and got himself into great positions, but he then has no confidence, conviction or composure. Hopefully one well-struck finish could get him up and running as a serious and game-changing contributor from the bench. We seem to have too many natural central defenders and too few natural full backs.

Cannot say that I analysed all 9 corners. However, the highlights show that from at least two of them, we managed a very decent shot on target (first half Tiffoney, second half Graham) that was blocked by a defender. On another day either or both might have gone in. Accordingly the delivery was still reasonable enough to provide realistic goal-scoring opportunities, so I do not think that we need to set up a formal enquiry.

He has already been mentioned, but let me join the chorus of approval for Akinola.. Tremendous performance. Real joy and pride in defending. I hope some of his blocks get into the JagZone highlights.

We need Big Wull back doing the team talk.

It's the Big Wull team talk we really need. Instill the strength of character that if we lose a goal, we immediately equalise rather than conceding another.

Underdog time again. If a few win, I get mega bonus points AHHAA HHHHA AHHHA HAHHH My brain was not really engaged and I did my "draft list" with A for home teams and B for away teams, so totally confused myself. Hopefully I have unscrambled it OK!

Well done to James Penrice for being part of the winning Livingston team v Celtic.

Lots of really good analysis here, and apologies if I now lower the quality of this. It reminds me of the days when Lyle Taylor and Kris Doolan were both excellent, but very different, centre forwards. In theory you could play them as a two, but that was rarely the optimum choice. Thus, at the risk of slightly frustrating both, it was one or the other. This did, however, have the advantage that rather than plugging away in the same shape (and/or possibly bring on substitutes of lesser quality), even if it was not working, we could change the game totally, by bringing on a quality (and fired up) new striker to pose different problems. My thoughts are more along the lines of 4-2-3-1. Bannigan and Docherty are the 2, and Graham or Rudden are the 1. The 3 can be flexible attacking midfielders who can change around as required to keep the opposition guessing. However, in general the central of the 3 would be Turner who can help the midfield 2 and also break forward behind/beyond the attacking 1. This also means that Turner is not automatically the one always to be substituted early (losing his deadball delivery option). The other 2 of the 3 could be Tiffoney/Hastie/Smith/Murray/McIver (or possibly Rudden playing a slightly different role from his norm, but one I think that he would be up to), depending on form and fitness. Briefly commenting on the 4, I will repeat what I have said before about re-creating the successful Akinola/Holt central defensive partnership. The fullbacks can be Mayo/Foster/Hendrie/McKenna depending again on form and fitness, and the challenges/demands of specific opponents.