Partick Thistle Football Club

To say that the mood of the majority of the crowd at half-time at Firhill this evening was one of disgruntlement would be something of an understatement. After opening the scoring inside the first five minutes, Ayr had come close, on a number of occasions, to putting the game almost beyond Thistle’s reach even before the first quarter of the match had been completed. A failure however, to add to Keigan Parker’s early goal would ultimately cost Ayr dear as a much improved Thistle performance resulted in a 4-2 win, Thistle’s first victory of 2012.

When speaking to www.ptfc.co.uk manager Jackie McNamara admitted that the 1-0 half-time deficit could have been much worse.

“I was actually delighted that it was only 1-0 at half-time as Ayr had a number of chances to score again after they had taken the lead. At times during the opening 30 minutes or so we were all over the place. The goal that we lost was, coming from a throw in, a bad goal for us to lose although Ayr would have been happy with the ball in from the left hand side.”

“It wasn’t so much good play from Ayr United that was causing us problems but rather our failure to do the fundamental things correctly. Although we were 1-0 down at half-time I was still confident that we could go on and win the game. I spoke to the players at the interval and made the point that they weren’t up against better players than them. I know that my players have the ability, I know what they are capable of producing, and I believe that if they do the fundamental things , the ugly side of the game if you like, correctly then there is no better side in the First Division.”

“Second half they did that, although I felt that the game was starting to turn our way in the closing 15 minutes of the first half. We got the equaliser at a good time, and it was an excellent strike from Kris Doolan, and that helped change the atmosphere a bit. I was really pleased to see Kris score a couple of goals tonight but even aside from the goals I thought his overall play was excellent. “

“One of the things that pleased me was the fact that we were able to put in some good crosses into good areas from the left hand side of the park. Chris Erskine did well in that respect and it was a good ball that he put in for Kris’ second goal which I was pleased to see him score with his head.”

“We had a lot of good performances in the second half and we could have scored a few more goals. There was a touch of anxiety when Ayr pulled one back near the end but we immediately score again with Kris Doolan playing the ball across for Paul Cairney.”

“I was pleased too with the performance of Kal Naismith when he came on. He looked strong and quick. With the kind of ability that he had he can be a big, big asset for us for the remainder of the season.”