Morton - Post Match Reaction
Saturday 21st August 2010
The up and down nature to the start of Thistle’s league season continued this afternoon. We had the bitter disappointment of the opening day heavy reverse at Kirkcaldy, the delight of a win against Dundee and today we were back to disappointment with an insipid 2-0 defeat at Cappielow in a very poor game of football.
www.ptfc.co.uk spoke with Thistle manager Ian McCall after the game and he was under no illusions as to just how poor the fare on offer had been.
“I thought that was a horrible game of football and I hate to see us produce that for the Thistle fans that came down for the game and the Morton fans as well as it was just an awful game of football. You don’t mind an awful game as long as you win but we didn’t look like doing that today.”
“I felt that it was a pretty even game and Bryn Halliwell has hardly had a save to make but the annoying thing is that we didn’t force the Morton keeper into any action either. Defensively I thought we were fine today but as well as they played against Dundee last week, middle to front today I thought we were very, very poor.”
“It’s frustrating to have played so well last week but not performed as we can today. I think that’s the kind of inconsistency that we are going to get this season but the standards shouldn’t have dropped that much and we need to put a stop to that. We can’t give away a goal the way that we did for their first goal. Albeit there was a touch of bad fortune surrounding it. We haven’t defended it well but the ball has basically just hit Conrad Balatoni and landed at their boy’s feet.”
“We’re not in a position to make too many changes but we did change the formation at half-time and I did feel that we were more on the front foot in the second half compared to the first and we had more control of the game but it still wasn’t good enough.”
The one good chance that we had in the second half fell to Liam Buchanan but his frustrating time in front of goal continued when he skewed his shot wide.
“To be honest and say that Liam’s lack of goals is a worry at the moment. It’s not through a lack of effort from Liam. He’s working hard enough but things just aren’t falling for him at the moment and he is snatching at chances. I never thought that I would say this but it could be that we will need to take him out of the team.”
“I think the whole season for everyone is going to be up and down. In the First Division it’s really only Raith Rovers who have made a fantastic start to the season that are showing any kind of consistency. The great thing about football is that there is always another game and we have a big game on Tuesday against Falkirk and then next Saturday against Cowdenbeath. I said to the players though that we don’t want to turn into the kind of team that play well one week and build up everybody’s hopes and then be very disappointing. I stress though that today applies those playing middle to front.”
