partickthedog

I give you Partick Thistle under Alan Archibald! Second season in the Premier League, but on a poor run of form taking us near to the relegation trap door. Facing close rivals Ross County at Firhill. Totally hopeless, heartless and gutless performance which we were lucky to lose only 1-3. Gary Fraser taking a wild fresh air kick at a player instead of tracking back, matching the run and trying to tackle. Dan Seaborne bringing a player down in the box and immediately heading for the touchline and having to be recalled, obviously disappointed not to have been sent off. Three Thistle players chasing the same opponent down the wing, but still failing to put in a tackle and secure possession to prevent a goal. Stevie Lawless tweeting about a change of scenery. Manager unable to turn the tide and having apparently lost the dressing room. Hands in pockets and not even an attempt to wave his arms. Forum in total meltdown. Archie has to go! Next week, we travel to Tannadice to face a then still reasonably strong Dundee United side. Thistle had not won there for decades. Fearing the worst. But under the direction of the selfsame Alan Archibald, Thistle play like Barcelona, including the "team goal of the century" finished off by Stephen O'Donnell. A convincing 2-0 victory moves on to a good spell of results securing safety with several games to spare. Have not quite ticked all your boxes and I am not trying to make any particular point in the current scenario, but it does show how the same personnel can sometimes turn things round.

Sandy I think that you will find that The Legend Blows' middle name is......Legend

Is that why we were short for the bench on Saturday?

For some reason my brain homed in on the result of crossing the Rhine with the Elbe, but all I could come up with was a long river in Germany with a big bend in it.

Wonderful stuff, TJR. I would have to check the detail, but I think I travelled just about all of the miles in the seasons you quoted. Here is a small ditty for those cheerful followers attending the first few games of this season (some past, some still to come). Feel free to replace him/he with her/she. "They seek him here, they seek him there. At Ochilview and down in Ayr. Cliftonhill and Stair Park. And the Energy Check at Firhill. He is a dedicated follower of Thistle." And before anyone says it. A last line of "He is a deludedly optimistic happy clapper" scans equally well.

Another drawback of JagZone is that to log in you have to click on a picture of Archie with his hands in his pockets.

Cannot find much positive to say apart from we still have half of the game left! Sometimes even when a team is playing badly, there is one player who is bucking the trend, still putting in a performance and acting as a catalyst to others. No evidence of such a player in the first half. Not sure where the second half inspiration will come from. Time for the management and players to really step up and show us what so far has been sadly lacking.

Suspended thankfully, ie not injured

I would characterise my default position as cheerful realism!

You have obviously seen some signs of improvement, as you predicted 12th last season.

Not quite sure about this being thrashed business. Last season our not very good team played Celtic 4 times and I think I am right in saying that the losing margins were 0-1, 0-2, 1-2 and 2-3. None of these are "thrashings". Only in the 0-2 game were we never really in sight of taking anything. In the 0-1 we should have been awarded a penalty which would have nicked us an admittedly undeserved point. In the 1-2 we led going into the second half. In the 2-3 we were within a brilliant tackle of securing an unlikely draw. I accept that the likelihood of a loss is high, but a thrashing is certainly not inevitable. Having said that, we should still be looking to win, however unlikely that might be. If Celtic have any potential weakness, it may be complacency in an early season League Cup tie when their team is still coming together and European survival is their top priority. We can but dream.

To be fair Christie put in a brilliant cross for Kris Doolan to score against Rangers towards the end of the 2016/2017 season. He provided something similar for Lyle Taylor v Ross County on the last game of the 2013/2014 season. And am I right in saying that it was Christie's super cross that Ade Azeez memorably converted at Parkhead?

I think that I need to learn a lesson from others on this forum. Expect and predict the worst.......and just sometimes you might be surprised by the best.

Watch out for Kluivert! It's the hope that kills you.

I was wrong about the 2-0. I think that the nearest similar scenario is now England v Holland in the last group stage match at Euro 96. England went 4-0 up, which was enough to allow Scotland to qualify for the knock out phase, then of course relaxed to permit Patrick Kluivert to wander through to score and eliminate Scotland. 4-1 is normally such a happy scoreline!

I foresee this winding to a conclusion approx 4.45pm with the score a comfortable Hearts 2 Inverness 0, and both sets of fans singing "Let's all laugh at Thistle". An ill-informed few might be singing "Let's all laugh at Partick".

Not going to argue with you, Mr Blows. I hope you enjoy the trip to Ayr next week and we all get to see a Thistle team performing with more flair, invention, speed and effectiveness. But if you are going to accuse me of blindness, please get the description of the blindness correct. It is match attending blindness, not forum blindness!

Disappointing performance and result, but I do not think that it merits the waves of negativity and immediate rushes to judgment. I will give this relatively new and still gelling team a bit more time. A few random thoughts: Storey's dynamism is encouraging, but he has to learn to shoot straight. Would be good for something to come off for Doolan and/or Erskine, then hopefully their form will start to flow. We missed O'Ware at both ends. I think he would have scored today from one of our many corners, although delivery was generally too high and floaty making it difficult to generate power in the header.

Strange game. Began well and the goal was a horror show totally against the run of play. Storey in particular and Erskine and Spittal to an extent looking effective, lots of attacking play, corners etc, even shots, but we rarely give the impression that we are going to score. In contrast Ayr working off about a quarter of the possession turn this into much more threatening opportunities and Bell has come to our rescue a few times.

Thank you for reassuring me that my memory is still working.

Operating at the outer fringes of my memory, but have some vague recollection that Eaglesham did most of the legwork (cross/saved shot?) for the goal leaving Paul Keegan with an easy tap in which was well celebrated.

In other words he is a Sena Back.

Ryan Scully to Aberdeen as back up to the back up?

Czech your facts.

In the event of a draw, you should just go to the pub. The shoot out will be low tension. I am sure that 10 points (ie no shoot out bonus) would easily put us in the top 4 runners up (as it did last year), so we would still qualify for the last 16. The only difference might be to our seeding, but I do not think that being seeded or not will avoid the inevitable away tie against a boring Premier League team.