The Thistle Archive

matches:2016-17: ← 37game 3839 →

39y, 7m, 12d	Alan Archibald	Ian Cathro

Niall Keown; Kris Doolan; Chris Erskine
David Amoo; Ade Azeez; Steven Lawless

Kris Doolan (1-0, 5 mins); Liam Lindsay (2-0, 73 mins)
Adam Barton (1-0, 5 mins); Abdul Osman (2-0, 73 mins)
Christie Elliott; Steven Lawless; Ade Azeez		Sam Nicholson; Esmaël Gonçalves
		Esmaël Gonçalves (@ 1-0, 60 mins)
Mustapha Dumbuya (Christie Elliott, 51 mins); Chris Erskine (Steven Lawless, 76 mins); Kris Doolan (Ade Azeez, 83 mins)		Jamie Walker (Sam Nicholson, 43 mins); Rory Currie (Dylan Bikey, 58 mins); Faycal Rherras (Moha Choulay, 81 mins)

31y, 10m, 15d	Tomáš Černý	Jack Hamilton
29y, 6m, 18d	Mustapha Dumbuya	Faycal Rherras
25y, 8m, 26d	Callum Booth	Alexandros Tziolis
21y, 4m, 13d	Liam Lindsay	Jamie Walker
24y, 5m, 18d	Danny Devine	Arnaud Djoum
21y, 10m, 20d	Niall Keown	Anastasios Avlonitis
29y, 11m, 29d	Abdul Osman	Krystian Nowak
26y, 1m, 18d	Adam Barton	Andraz Struna
30y, 2m, 14d	Kris Doolan	Rory Currie
23y, 3m, 8d	Ryan Edwards	Lennard Sowah
30y, 0m, 17d	Chris Erskine	Esmaël Gonçalves

26y, 9m, 11d

26y, 6m, 16d	Mark Ridgers	Viktor Noring
25y, 10m, 12d	David Amoo	Perry Kitchen
25y, 10m, 13d	Steven Lawless	Sam Nicholson
25y, 8m, 30d	Christie Elliott	Moha Choulay
23y, 1m, 17d	Ade Azeez	Dylan Bikey
19y, 11m, 17d	Kevin Nisbet	Liam Smith
18y, 4m, 5d	Andy McCarthy	Malaury Martin

	Teamlines derived from PTFC / SPFL. Thistle generally in playing order, opposition in squad number order.
	4143 (SPFL)

A poor defensive header from an Edwards free-kick let Doolan turn and fire home (5) and a fine save denied him a 2nd before h-t. Hearts, who did little with their possession, were reduced to 10 men (60) then Lindsay fired home an Osman cross on the half volley (73). Excellent team performance. No failures.

Partick Thistle secured a third straight victory, beating 10-man Hearts 2-0 at Firhill. Kris Doolan seized upon an awful Lennard Sowah header to swivel and fire the hosts ahead with his third goal in two games, before twice being denied by Hearts goalkeeper Jack Hamilton. The Jam Tarts lost frustrated striker Esmael Goncalves to a second yellow card after the break. And Liam Lindsay blasted in Partick's second to seal the three points. Doolan is one of those unheralded Premiership strikers who consistently comes up with the goals season after season. He got two last weekend against Hamilton, and it took him only six minutes to get on the scoresheet here. Dreadful defending from Sowah certainly helped, his header failing to clear the danger, and the ball falling to Doolan in the six-yard box, who turned smartly to hook a shot into the corner of the net. That was his 98th goal in Thistle colours, and given the fragile confidence of the visitors - still licking their wounds from their midweek Edinburgh derby defeat - Doolan must have fancied his chances of claiming his century. He found the net again in the 26th minute, latching onto Adam Barton's mis-hit shot, but the flag went up for offside. Hamilton had to rush out to deny Doolan the opportunity to shoot midway inside the box, then produced a superb reaction stop to beat away the striker's bullet header. All season long Partick have been creating chances but not taking them. Now with Doolan finally hitting form it could have a transformative effect on their season.

There was a blow for Hearts before the game when veteran defender Aaron Hughes pulled out of the team with a calf injury. They certainly missed his assurance and authority. Head coach Ian Cathro opted to push Sowah - normally a left-back - into central defence. Faycal Rherras came into the starting line-up at left-back. As well as being culpable for the opener, Sowah cut an uncomfortable figure all afternoon. The home team - and the home crowd - sensed it, and revelled in it. Every time Thistle attacked the alarm bells rang at the back for Hearts. The question has to be - would moving Krystian Nowak to centre-back have been a better and more natural fit? This was so far from the response Hearts were looking for after their Scottish Cup humbling by Hibernian on Wednesday. Not only were they unconvincing at the back, they were also toothless up-front. When they did show their teeth it was in entirely the wrong fashion. Goncalves earned his second yellow for a late challenge on Christie Elliott, having mouthed off at the referee for his first. The striker let down his team-mates when they needed all the help they could get. That came midway through the second half and there seemed little hope for Hearts after that. Lindsay fired home to clinch a thoroughly deserved the three points and bring a dismal week for the Gorgie club and boss Cathro to a close.

Early in the second half Eamonn Brophy got his head to a Redmond cross but it flew wide of the target. Brophy got closer with his next effort. This time he got beyond Liam Lindsay before firing in a low shot, but Cerny was alert to the danger and stretched well to turn the effort round the post. Thistle should have opened the scoring through Lindsay when he blasted over from four yards when Woods parried a Devine header into his path. Midway through the second half the home side made the breakthrough. Substitutes Chris Erskine and Doolan combined as the latter rose at the back post to head home the former's cross from the left. And Thistle doubled their lead when Booth's cross was perfect for Doolan to dispatch another header beyond the reach of Woods. Thistle have now gone 11 games unbeaten against Accies, and while Alan Archibald's men rise up to the top half of the table, the visitors are left in the thick of a relegation battle.

Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald:

I thought we were magnificent today. Even before the sending-off I thought we deserved to be well on top. We missed a great chance at 1-0 and I thought that would come back to haunt us but thankfully it didn't. We tried to make it a bit ugly at the start. We like to pass it but the pitch doesn't always make it easy for that. We tried to be as aggressive as we could. I thought we did the ugly side very well today.

Hearts head coach Ian Cathro:

Ultimately it is an unacceptable result for this football club, and lots of the performance was in the same category. We suffered the [loss of a] goal early on through simple, simple individual defending things that we need to do better. Nobody [here] is in the best moment of their lives. It has been a bad week for this club. We have the responsibility to improve those things and everybody in these moments has to look inside themselves and find more, find strength and we have to stay focused together and deal with what we have to deal with. We must move forward very, very quickly.

Jonathan Sutherland, 25-Feb-2017, bbc.com

3 WINS TO NIL ROCKIN' THE STATS

● Adam Barton (for Kris Doolan) gets his first assist for Thistle.

● Kris Doolan scores his 89th League goal for the club. Only Willie Sharp (90) has scored more.

● Esmaël Gonçalves is the first player to be sent off against Thistle since Celtic's Nir Bitton, almost 14 months ago.

● Abdul Osman (for Liam Lindsay) gets his 4th assist of the season in competitive action, and lies second in the table behind Sean Welsh (5).

● Liam Lindsay scores his last goal for Thistle.

● At the time, Liam's 7th goal of the season kept up an exciting three-way battle for top competitive scorer in this season, as he lay just behind Chris Erskine (8) and Kris Doolan (9).

● All three of Thistle's oncoming subs were booked. Whilst there have been several doubles over the years - Doolan and Elliott in the Challenge Cup final being the most recent example - the triple whammy is almost certainly a first, with only some patchy data in the mid 1990s preventing a statement of fact.

● Tomáš Černý makes his 50th competitive appearance as a Jag.

● Tomáš Černý's superb clean-sheet record continues to build, now sitting at a ratio of 40% (20 in 50 games). Of all the 'keepers who could reasonably be considered as regulars, it's the second greatest ratio of all-time, and the best for 100 years.

● All four of Thistle's home League wins in 2016-17 have been by the same 2-0 scoreline.

● Thistle win to nil for the third consecutive competitive game. It's been 36 years since we last did that as a top-flight club, way back in 1981. Archie's Jags are gunning for the all-time club-record of 5-in-a-row which was set in March 2013 - on match day six of Archie's reign!!!

ongoing sequences:

● 33 consecutive competitive appearances for Ade Azeez, 15th July 2016 to date, a new personal best. (Longest run since: Ryan Edwards - 39 games; 2nd Mar 2016 to 31st Dec 2016. Club-record: Johnny Jackson - 313 games; 28th Aug 1926 to 25th Mar 1933.)

● 56 away League games without a penalty award, 1st Mar 2014 to date. (Longest run since the club-record: 62 games; 1st Apr 1911 to 7th Nov 1914.)

Stats Watch adheres to our stated definitions of League, League Max, Major Competitive, Competitive or All Games. Where there is no written qualification, you should presume that the Stat in question is compiled from the All Games criteria.

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