Park the fuss
I have very, very strong opinions on the way our club was treated and there will be a time and place for them. But I don’t want my players to feel resentment, I want them to go and win football matches so for now we’ll..
IAN McCALL intends to bury the bitterness over Partick Thistle’s relegation into League One by looking at the bigger picture of lifting themselves back to the top.
The Jags boss wouldn’t be dragged into the sense of injustice felt at Firhill over being voted down a division despite sitting only two points behind Queen of the South when the season was halted nine fixtures short of the Championship’s conclusion.
McCall admits he’ll bide his time to talk about the resentment felt at the treatment of his club but with a new season approaching his focus remains firmly on football.
He said: “In the five months all the stuff was happening I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to speak about it.
“I have got my feelings on it and when the time is right I’ll talk about it but I don’t think the right time is now. I just want to move on with the football, try to complete a season and see where we finish.
“We’ll respect every team we play and try to win football matches. I have got very strong opinions on it but it’s pointless me giving those just now.
“There will be a time and place for that but it’s cer t ainly not before a season. I don’t want players to feel resentment. I just want them to go out and play football and win matches fair and square. “Every man uses what they can. My mission was to change what I believed was a fractured football club and to get everyone pulling in one direction. “Like any manager, there are many ways to do that. The best way to do it is to get good footballers in my experience. “The other stuff, I will talk about further down the line. There
is enough going on around the world I don’t want to add to that just now.
“Albeit, when I do talk about it, I think some of my words will be quite strong. Now is definitely not the right time for me to talk about that kind of stuff.”
McCall also admits he’s had his work cut out transforming an underachieving Thistle dressing room which he inherited from Gary Caldwell when he made his return to Maryhill after a spell at Ayr.
The Jags boss said: “I’m on record saying that when I went into Ayr many years ago, people wouldn’t have believed what the dressing room was like. It had to be changed.
“I’m not saying that’s what it was like here but certainly everyone, for me, wasn’t pulling in the right direction and there wasn’t that togetherness.
“The one thing this has done is that it’s put me seriously under pressure. I need to do well this season. A lot of the supporters and media don’t know the things I know that have been going on – just on the football side.
“But I’m not disillusioned I ’m looking forward to getting back to winning matches. I was disillusioned five years ago when I came through my bad illness and Lachlan Cameron [Ayr’s chairman] gave me my life back, that’s when I was disillusioned.
“We are living in pretty weird times but like everyone else, I’m looking forward to the football starting back again.
“Our fans have been through the wringer but that’s not just to do with what has happened in the last five months, it’s also to do with what has happened over the last three years at our football club. “It hasn’t been good enough and I am part of that. I know the players I have now would hold their hands up too “It’s been a tough watch for our fans, to finish top six in the Premier League and then three years later find ourselves where we are in League One, it’s been hard. “There have been reasons for that, of course there have. But ultimately the team hasn’t been good enough and that’s what we need to put right.”