Home and away part 4, the final countdown

[Rid Skwerr]

I though we saw yesterday the perfect fruition of the Premier League / Neil Doncaster design of the play-off process.

It is deliberately set up to give the "big team" the maximum chance of staying up by making the wee team play themselves to a standstill before they get a crack at the top division.

County took full advantage of our inability to raise the same herculean effort for the sixth game in a row and Thistle were just unable to drag themselves over the line after the longest season in our history.

Also, by playing both ties under VAR, they allowed the opportunity for the faceless TV referees to have a wee  word in the match official's shell-like if it looked like the Big Team was in any danger.

Congratulations to Doncaster and Co - their Cunning Plan worked exactly as they intended, and congratulations to County on earning themselves another season in a league they cannot possibly win, and another season of losing more games than they win.

 

 

[Lenziejag]

7 hours ago, Rid Skwerr said:

I though we saw yesterday the perfect fruition of the Premier League / Neil Doncaster design of the play-off process.

It is deliberately set up to give the "big team" the maximum chance of staying up by making the wee team play themselves to a standstill before they get a crack at the top division.

County took full advantage of our inability to raise the same herculean effort for the sixth game in a row and Thistle were just unable to drag themselves over the line after the longest season in our history.

Also, by playing both ties under VAR, they allowed the opportunity for the faceless TV referees to have a wee  word in the match official's shell-like if it looked like the Big Team was in any danger.

Congratulations to Doncaster and Co - their Cunning Plan worked exactly as they intended, and congratulations to County on earning themselves another season in a league they cannot possibly win, and another season of losing more games than they win.

 

 

I don’t actually go along with the idea of the playoffs being designed in favour of the premiership team. If you sat back and thought about it, I am sure you would agree.

The Championship season has 36 games vs the Premiership’s 38. It is probably expected that the 2nd placed team will play the 11 placed team. So their games vs 3rd/4th placed team will bring them up to 38. If the 3rd/4th place team wins through, they will only have played 2 more games than the premiership team before they meet. I think that is a fair enough cost for not finishing 2nd. 

[exiledjag]

9 hours ago, Rid Skwerr said:

I though we saw yesterday the perfect fruition of the Premier League / Neil Doncaster design of the play-off process.

It is deliberately set up to give the "big team" the maximum chance of staying up by making the wee team play themselves to a standstill before they get a crack at the top division.

County took full advantage of our inability to raise the same herculean effort for the sixth game in a row and Thistle were just unable to drag themselves over the line after the longest season in our history.

Also, by playing both ties under VAR, they allowed the opportunity for the faceless TV referees to have a wee  word in the match official's shell-like if it looked like the Big Team was in any danger.

Congratulations to Doncaster and Co - their Cunning Plan worked exactly as they intended, and congratulations to County on earning themselves another season in a league they cannot possibly win, and another season of losing more games than they win.

 

 

I totally agree with this and how anyone can not see the sense in the above is beyond me.

The fix is not in the number of games Ross County or The Jags were required to play over a season but the timescale over which we were  required to play the final two play off  games.

A week between the two games against Queens and Ayr was fair but why not a week between the two RC games. Two days was just not enough time to recover.

Rid skwerr is quite right the whole Premiership play off system is weighted to keep the 'big team' in the SPL.

A two leg semi-final and final is all that is required but then that would be fair!!

[Fawlty Towers]

I must confess to not being a fan of play offs in general - even the much hyped up English ones. You play over a season and at the end the best team wins and the worst one is bottom. I know it will never get voted in but 2 up and 2 down is the way to go (in my opinion).

If we must have play offs then they should be there to reward not give poor teams a second chance so still 2 down and the play off is to see which other club apart from the champions goes up.

[laukat]

Don't think we can have any complaints on the playoff schedule this year and its not the reason we didn't make it.

Last season we played ICT home and away with 3 days gap between home and away leg. ICT had to then play their home and away tie with Arbroath with a similar gap in between and then a final against St Johnstone with a similar gap in between. St Johnstone had a 9 day rest period between last league game and playing ICT. ICT had only 7 days between playing Arbroath and playing St Johnstone. So normally the schedule is a lot more demanding for championship clubs than this year.

It is difficult for a 4th or 3rd place time to get through as they have to play 6 must win games and that arguably places more strain than league games. However it should be more difficult for the 4th and 3rd place teams to get through, if they want it easier then make sure you finish 2nd.

The schedule this year has never been as good for the 2nd placed championship team. 2 weeks rest followed by 4 games in about 3 weeks as opposed to the 2nd bottom premiership team who had 5 games in the same timescale.

County this year couldn't fill their bench in either game against us whereas we had a full squad in the last 2 games. So the schedule this year wasn't anything to do with our loss.

In the 2 ties against County we used only 14 players from 21 available. In both ties county used all 5 subs, we used 3 in the first game and only 2 in the second. If tiredness was a factor we had plenty of options we could have used. The fact Doolan didn't use them either suggests he didn't believe what was on his bench was good enough or that tiredness wasn't a factor.

[Lenziejag]

1 hour ago, exiledjag said:

I totally agree with this and how anyone can not see the sense in the above is beyond me.

The fix is not in the number of games Ross County or The Jags were required to play over a season but the timescale over which we were  required to play the final two play off  games.

A week between the two games against Queens and Ayr was fair but why not a week between the two RC games. Two days was just not enough time to recover.

Rid skwerr is quite right the whole Premiership play off system is weighted to keep the 'big team' in the SPL.

A two leg semi-final and final is all that is required but then that would be fair!!

Ross County also only had 2 days to recover, plus their final game was 2 days after our 2nd leg vs Ayr. Maybe it was more the age of our guys ?

[Auld Jag]

Of course VAR had a part to play. The playoff system in Scotland might be aimed at keeping the Premier team in the league, although it didn't help us 5 years ago. But at the end of the day we only have ourselves to blame. We blew a 3 goal lead in for us a terrible last 20 minutes of normal time. I hope our management team look at what happened in that 20 minutes and think what they and the team could've done differently to try and avoid anything like that happening again. The current management team are learning their trade in every game we play. A painful and costly lesson, but i am sure they will learn from it.

I hope Dools now takes time off in what has been a very busy and emotional time for him, both on and of course of the pitch.

[Yellow & Redneck]

20 minutes ago, Auld Jag said:

I hope Dools now takes time off in what has been a very busy and emotional time for him, both on and of course of the pitch.

Completely agree. However, the nature of the beast is that the League Cup gets underway in 5-6 weeks. Pre-season is getting shorter and shorter, and we are already behind some of the Championship clubs now in terms of recruitment. Won't be a long break for Dools. 

[Duke Gekantawa]

2 minutes ago, Auld Jag said:

Of course VAR had a part to play. The playoff system in Scotland might be aimed at keeping the Premier team in the league, although it didn't help us 5 years ago. But at the end of the day we only have ourselves to blame. We blew a 3 goal lead in for us a terrible last 20 minutes of normal time. I hope our management team look at what happened in that 20 minutes and think what they and the team could've done differently to try and avoid anything like that happening again. The current management team are learning their trade in every game we play. A painful and costly lesson, but i am sure they will learn from it.

I hope Dools now takes time off in what has been a very busy and emotional time for him, both on and of course of the pitch.

I think it's possible to overthink this. There is nothing really that could be done about that first goal, and without it I don't think County get back into it. With the first goal the momentum went with County. The second goal was of course a horrible error, but how address not making horrible individual errors I'm not sure. The timing of the second goal meant that the momentum had fully swung County's way.

Momentum is difficult to turn around when its against you. There's been a few times in only the past few years we've seen big leads overturned in e.g., two-legged European ties by the best teams in world football (Barca v Liverpool, Man City v Real (2 injury time goals!), Ajax v. Spurs, PSG v. Barca etc.). In each case, the teams were of similar ability on paper and in each case a big lead was squandered. I don't think the likes of Barca, PSG and City lack mentality overall. 

But even with the momentum in County's favour, we had a number of chances and decent openings to win the game.  It's a shame we never took one of them.

[Lambies Lost Doo]

16 minutes ago, Yellow & Redneck said:

Completely agree. However, the nature of the beast is that the League Cup gets underway in 5-6 weeks. Pre-season is getting shorter and shorter, and we are already behind some of the Championship clubs now in terms of recruitment. Won't be a long break for Dools. 

League Group stages were designed to replace pre season friendlies.

We are in unfortunate position where we could not plan until after play offs so behind the curve.

Edited June 6, 2023 by Lambies Lost Doo

[lady-isobel-barnett]

Just looked. The first Jags game I attended last season was an away friendly against Alloa. That was on the 21st of June!!!! 

[Garscube Road End 2]

16 minutes ago, lady-isobel-barnett said:

Just looked. The first Jags game I attended last season was an away friendly against Alloa. That was on the 21st of June!!!! 

Effectively a 12 month season! Wow!

[The Thistle Archive]

Undoubtedly it was better to have crashed and burned under Doolan than to have faded away under McCall, but that was possibly the most horrendous collapse in the history of this football club. Drained. Shell-shocked. Disconsolate. Think we've all been through the wringer in the last few days. Recovery from this may not be so easy...

... was hard to get motivated to assemble the 55th and final match hub of the season, but it's done now, if you can bear to look. The hub carries a good report from Graeme McGarry, as well as several video options, and we're hoping to embed some photos from Donald Wilson soon. Elsewhere, the final squad stats tables make for incredible reading, 130 competitive goals or assists from just 7 Jags (Brian Graham, Kyle Turner, Scott Tiffoney, Jack McMillan, Steven Lawless, Aidan Fitzpatrick, Kevin Holt) which is way off the scale of normality. It's been quite the season in so many ways.

The Thistle Archive →

 

UNWANTED FINAL RECORD ● The closing game of the 148th season of Partick Thistle F.C. ● At 348 days ('All Games') 2022-23 breaks the previous longest season record (1889-90) by 10 days and at 330 days ('Competitive') it breaks that previous record (1995-96) by 4 days. ● Thistle play on the 4th June for the first-time ever. Only 8 calendar dates remain unplayed. ● Thistle field the same starting eleven in a fifth consecutive game, the longest such run since 5-in-a-row in late 2020. ● Jack McMillan completes the ever-impressive feat of appearing in every competitive match of the season, and is the first to do so since James Penrice and Blair Spittal, both of whom managed the feat in 2018-19. ● Jack McMillan registers his 52nd appearance of the season, putting him joint 6th of all-time in that respect. It's the highest tally since Mo Johnston (55) in 1982-83, and 4 off the club-record (56) set by Davie McParland in 1963-64. ● Amazingly, Thistle have now scored in TEN consecutive first halves. It's the longest such run since March 1938, when an impressive 14-in-a-row was registered. ● In the first half, Thistle go 16 competitive goals without reply, the longest such streak since 16 successive goals were scored in April 2021 (the club's all-time League record). ● Partick Thistle finalise the Scottish record for most goals in a single play-offs campaign, an incredible 19 in 6 games. ● Partick Thistle become the first club in Scottish football to blow a 3 goal lead in any play-offs final. Thistle are the 4th club to suffer such a fate in the play-offs in all, following on from Alloa (2008 & 2023), Forfar (2013) and Montrose (2022). ● Thistle have went to penalties versus Ross County on 3 occasions and have lost each and every time. ● Victoria Park used to be a happy hunting ground, but, for the first time in history, Thistle go 5 competitive games without an away win to Ross County, a run which stretches from 2017 to date. ● With 101 goals in all competitions, the class of 22-23 finish as the outright 5th highest scoring Thistle team of all-time. It's the highest tally since the club-record (121) was set in 1953-54.   ongoing sequences: ● 8 competitive home games without defeat; 4th Mar 2023 to date. (Longest run since: 8 games; 3rd Mar 2020 to 5th Dec 2020. Club-record: 24 games; 5th May 2001 to 17th Aug 2002.) ● 52 consecutive competitive appearances for Jack McMillan, 9th Jul 2022 to date, a new personal best. (Longest run since: Blair Spittal - 57 games, 31st Mar 2018 to 4th May 2019. Club-record: Johnny Jackson - 313 games, 28th Aug 1926 to 25th Mar 1933.)

 

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by The Thistle Archive

[Auld Jag]

1 hour ago, The Thistle Archive said:

Undoubtedly it was better to have crashed and burned under Doolan than to have faded away under McCall, but that was possibly the most horrendous collapse in the history of this football club. Drained. Shell-shocked. Disconsolate. Think we've all been through the wringer in the last few days. Recovery from this may not be so easy...

... was hard to get motivated to assemble the 55th and final match hub of the season, but it's done now, if you can bear to look. The hub carries a good report from Graeme McGarry, as well as several video options, and we're hoping to embed some photos from Donald Wilson soon. Elsewhere, the final squad stats tables make for incredible reading, 130 competitive goals or assists from just 7 Jags (Brian Graham, Kyle Turner, Scott Tiffoney, Jack McMillan, Steven Lawless, Aidan Fitzpatrick, Kevin Holt) which is way off the scale of normality. It's been quite the season in so many ways.

The Thistle Archive →

 

UNWANTED FINAL RECORD ● The closing game of the 148th season of Partick Thistle F.C. ● At 348 days ('All Games') 2022-23 breaks the previous longest season record (1889-90) by 10 days and at 330 days ('Competitive') it breaks that previous record (1995-96) by 4 days. ● Thistle play on the 4th June for the first-time ever. Only 9 calendar dates remain unplayed. ● Thistle field the same starting eleven in a fifth consecutive game, the longest such run since 5-in-a-row in late 2020. ● Jack McMillan completes the ever-impressive feat of appearing in every competitive match of the season, and is the first to do so since James Penrice and Blair Spittal, both of whom managed the feat in 2018-19. ● Jack McMillan registers his 52nd appearance of the season, putting him joint 6th of all-time in that respect. It's the highest tally since Mo Johnston (55) in 1982-83, and 4 off the club-record (56) set by Davie McParland in 1963-64. ● Amazingly, Thistle have now scored in TEN consecutive first halves. It's the longest such run since March 1938, when an impressive 14-in-a-row was registered. ● In the first half, Thistle go 16 competitive goals without reply, the longest such streak since 16 successive goals were scored in April 2021 (the club's all-time League record). ● Partick Thistle finalise the Scottish record for most goals in a single play-offs campaign, an incredible 19 in 6 games. ● Partick Thistle become the first club in Scottish football to blow a 3 goal lead in any play-offs final. Thistle are the 4th club to suffer such a fate in the play-offs in all, following on from Alloa (2008 & 2023), Forfar (2013) and Montrose (2022). ● Thistle have went to penalties versus Ross County on 3 occasions and have lost each and every time. ● Victoria Park used to be a happy hunting ground, but, for the first time in history, Thistle go 5 competitive games without an away win to Ross County, a run which stretches from 2017 to date. ● With 101 goals in all competitions, the class of 22-23 finish as the outright 5th highest scoring Thistle team of all-time. It's the highest tally since the club-record (121) was set in 1953-54.   ongoing sequences: ● 8 competitive home games without defeat; 4th Mar 2023 to date. (Longest run since: 8 games; 3rd Mar 2020 to 5th Dec 2020. Club-record: 24 games; 5th May 2001 to 17th Aug 2002.) ● 52 consecutive competitive appearances for Jack McMillan, 9th Jul 2022 to date, a new personal best. (Longest run since: Blair Spittal - 57 games, 31st Mar 2018 to 4th May 2019. Club-record: Johnny Jackson - 313 games, 28th Aug 1926 to 25th Mar 1933.)

 

 

Usually put a like, but couldn't for this one.

Thanks to everybody @The Thistle Archive for all their hard work over the years. 

[Auld Jag]

On 6/6/2023 at 3:45 PM, Duke Gekantawa said:

I think it's possible to overthink this. There is nothing really that could be done about that first goal, and without it I don't think County get back into it. With the first goal the momentum went with County. The second goal was of course a horrible error, but how address not making horrible individual errors I'm not sure. The timing of the second goal meant that the momentum had fully swung County's way.

Momentum is difficult to turn around when its against you. There's been a few times in only the past few years we've seen big leads overturned in e.g., two-legged European ties by the best teams in world football (Barca v Liverpool, Man City v Real (2 injury time goals!), Ajax v. Spurs, PSG v. Barca etc.). In each case, the teams were of similar ability on paper and in each case a big lead was squandered. I don't think the likes of Barca, PSG and City lack mentality overall. 

But even with the momentum in County's favour, we had a number of chances and decent openings to win the game.  It's a shame we never took one of them.

Don't think i am overthinking it at all. When they got their 1st goal we were still 2 goals ahead in the tie. We gave them even more momentum by presenting them with a chance to go ahead on the day, which they took. We had more than enough experienced players on the park to calm things down by keeping possession, not sloppy passing that ends up giving them the ball back, near enough straight from kick off.

[laukat]

League cup draw tomorrow 2023/24 Viaplay Cup draw seedings | SPFL

Anyone want to bet on us drawing Ross County?

[Auld Jag]

13 minutes ago, laukat said:

League cup draw tomorrow 2023/24 Viaplay Cup draw seedings | SPFL

Anyone want to bet on us drawing Ross County?

And beat them on pens for the bonus point.