The Thistle Archive

matches:2020-21: ← 08game 0910 →

56y, 0m, 24d	Ian McCall	Ian Murray

Kieran Wright; Rhys Breen; Brian Graham; Blair Spittal
Jamie Sneddon; Ciaran McKenna; Salim Kouider-Aissa; Joe Cardle

Brian Graham (1-1, 40 mins); Blair Spittal (2-1, 60 mins)		Dale Carrick (0-1, 36 mins)
Shea Gordon (1-1, 40 mins); Connor Murray (2-1, 60 mins)		Sean Crighton (0-1, 36 mins)
Connor Murray; James Penrice		Callum Fordyce; Max Currie; Leon McCann

Blair Spittal (Blair Lyons, 70 mins); Connor Murray (Mouhamed Niang, 76 mins)		Griffin Sabatini (Kyle Connell, 59 mins); Dale Carrick (Thomas Robert, 74 mins); Calum Gallagher (Eoghan Stokes, 85 mins)

21y, 6m, 23d	Kieran Wright	Max Currie
35y, 2m, 23d	Richard Foster	Kyle MacDonald
21y, 10m, 2d	James Penrice	Leon McCann
26y, 6m, 14d	Darren Brownlie	Sean Crighton
20y, 6m, 18d	Rhys Breen	Callum Fordyce
28y, 1m, 7d	Stuart Bannigan	Josh Kerr
27y, 9m, 1d	Ross Docherty	Craig Thomson
22y, 5m, 8d	Shea Gordon	Paul McKay
32y, 11m, 1d	Brian Graham	Griffin Sabatini
23y, 6m, 0d	Connor Murray	Dale Carrick
24y, 10m, 5d	Blair Spittal	Calum Gallagher

25y, 11m, 7d

18y, 9m, 7d	Luke Scullion	David Hutton
24y, 7m, 10d	Ryan Williamson	Thomas Robert
33y, 8m, 17d	Joe Cardle	Dean Ritchie
24y, 1m, 1d	Blair Lyons	Harlain Mbayo
18y, 10m, 19d	Charlie Reilly	Kyle Connell
24y, 7m, 2d	Salim Kouider-Aissa	Euan O'Reilly
21y, 0m, 16d	Mouhamed Niang	Eoghan Stokes
19y, 0m, 23d	Andy Rodden

	Teamlines derived from PTFC / SPFL. Both sides generally in playing order. Thistle filled 8 of their 9 allocated bench slots, whilst Airdrie filled 7 of theirs.
	The 'network' missed the fact that Airdrie's keeper, Max Currie, was cautioned for dissent in the 59th minute (after Airdrie's denied penalty claim and Thistle's break-away to score).
	0 (played closed-doors due to the coronavirus pandemic)

Robust Airdrie matched Thistle and probably deserved a draw. A back post header (36) was cancelled out by Graham from a Gordon pass (40). Spittal's 20-yarder hit the post (57) but 3 mins later his terrific swerving shot from 25 yards won the points. A pen claim and late pressure made for an anxious last 20 mins.

Alison McConnell, 25-Oct-2020, Evening Times

PARTICK THISTLE recovered from the loss of a first-half goal to take all three points against Airdrie and get their League One season up and running. There was no shortage of endeavour from Thistle yesterday as they withstood a robust 20-minute finale with Airdrie using their physicality and set-pieces to try to wrestle a point from the encounter. Over the 90 minutes, however, Thistle had done enough to take all three. Brian Graham had cancelled out Dale Carrick’s opener after he had combined with Shea Gordon to put the teams level going into the interval, but for the opening stages of the second period there was an inevitability about Thistle adding to their lead. Blair Spittal thwacked a rasping 25-yard drive off the post and the woodwork was still reeling when he curled in an impressive effort to put the Firhill side ahead just a minute later. Airdrie got their campaign off to a winning start last weekend and might well have nicked a draw just at the death. Thistle were resilient as they held on for all three points and will now look to try to build some momentum as the campaign is played out against the complexities of the Covid-19 challenges.

Firhill manager Ian McCall was irked by comments in the build-up to the game from Sean Crighton, the Airdrie captain, who had suggested that Thistle had underestimated the magnitude of the task that lies ahead of them this season in engineering a way out of the league and back to the Championship, the league they were ousted from in contentious circumstances this summer:

The Airdrie captain said that we would take League One lightly. I don’t know how he came to that conclusion after we had played just one game but I think you can see from that performance that we respect every team. There is no game that will be easy. Looks at Hearts and Arbroath on Friday night. We know that we will have to work our socks off to win any game of football in this league. There are odd results all over the place and if you look at this league you can see the results. I thought Darren Brownlie was the best player on the park. The way that Airdrie play, they were on top of him but I thought he won every header going. I thought we thoroughly deserved the win. I know the last 15 or 20 minutes of the second half saw Airdrie try and push themselves into it but I am not sure that they really genuinely threatened us at any time. It was a cracking goal for us that was the winner and over the piece I think we merited that. I thought we did fairly well in our League Cup games and this now gives us something to go and build on in the league.

Airdrie had claimed vociferously for a penalty with manager Ian Murray still frustrated about the way that panned out after the game:

The players were adamant they should have had it and then they go up to the other end of the park and score. I thought the very least we deserved from this was a point – the very least. I was really disappointed to go into the break level because I thought we had been the better team so to take nothing from the game is a hard one to take.

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