After being knocked out of the Betfred Cup to lower league opponents you’d expect Alan Archibald to mention farcical and disrespectful.
His Partick Thistle defenders managed to lose three first half goals to a team recently relegated with the scorer judged surplus to requirements at his parent club- sent to Tannadice to beef up and prove himself.
As well as analysing his own side’s failings at Dundee United the Partick Thistle boss yesterday articulated his feelings about not facing a trip to Celtic Park tomorrow.
Whether supporters, players or managers like it or not the rules of the SPFL allow every club to cancel a home fixture from the opening batch of games to allow them to play in a friendly.
It’s not a secret, it’s not underhand, it hasn’t been spring on Thistle by surprise. If he’d watched Celtic v Motherwell on Wednesday night Archibald might be grateful for he extra time he has to work his defence.
Rather than gloss over the issue or say that they’ve known about the blank weekend since the fixtures were announced the Thistle boss has gone all intellectual with the Craig Brown routine of not wanting to do something then proceeding to do exactly that.
In The Sun today he says: “I don’t have too much to say about it because it will sound like sour grapes but it’s happened to us again and we just need to get on with it.
“I do think it’s a bit farcical whoever it happens to. It’s not great to have a weekend off but it’s happened to us again.
“It’s disrespectful to the rest of the teams and it makes the league look poor. I don’t think that it happens anywhere else as far as I’m aware. I think and certainly hope they will address it soon.”
If Archibald has a problem with this rule he should take it up with his board of directors who can raise the issue and get a vote on the matter at the AGM of the SPFL.
Perhaps he might be told that anything that assists teams playing in Europe has a knock on benefit for Thistle and the rest- if Celtic get past Hapoel Beer Sheva a cheque for over £100,000 will be on it’s way to Firhill to help Archibald get over a blank weekend.
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