Firhill veteran Doolan admits his freefalling side face a battle to retain top-flight status
The 2-0 scoreline was gutting enough for the Jags to take, but the flat nature of the performance in such a crucial game had alarm bells ringing and fans voicing their displeasure all around Firhill long before full-time.
The reverse leaves Thistle three points adrift at the bottom of the table, still without a win after nine league fixtures, and manager Alan Archibald went as far as to say that the visiting players seemed to want it more.
Doolan was looking desolate enough without hearing that, but he says it is imperative that the Jags players pick themselves up and come out all guns blazing for the visit of Dundee next week.
“We don’t want to hear that Kilmarnock wanted it more, because we should be wanting it every bit as much,” said Doolan. “We’re fighting for our lives.
“I’m sure everybody is disappointed that we’ve not come away with any points. The players are really hurting.
“The fans are entitled to voice their opinion and tell us what they think, because they pay money to come and watch.
“We’ve got to deal with that, and now it’s up to us. We’re the ones who can change the results on the pitch, and we do have a run of games where we can turn things round.
“There’s just a feeling of total disappointment. It was a game we thought we could really stamp our authority on and get three points, but obviously to come away with a 2-0 defeat is hard to take.
“We never got going. We tried to pass the ball but nothing was coming of it, and it gets frustrating when it’s like that, but we have to find another way to win a game.”
Doolan believes that it is no use reiterating that the players are fully behind their boss, they have to start showing it on a matchday day just as they do in training.g.
He is taking aking some solace from the fact that Thistle have dug their way out of such situationsations in the past, but ut he j just ust wishes theyey didn’t make life ife so difficultlt for themselves ves in the first place. lace.
“Every day we try to showhow the manager ger that we are behind him im and we’re re working g hard,” he said. “Sometimes it takes a while for things to click, and right now nothingnothin seems to be goin going our way, bu but we’ve bee been through toug tough times before andan come out the othe other side stronger, so w we have to take comfortcomfor from that. “We’ve got plenty o of players here who hav have been through this ump umpteen times, but we don’tdon want to keep goin going through it becaus because it’s not nice, an and it doesn’t ge get any nicer every year. It’s not something we want to say we will just deal with because we’re used to it, but again we’re in this position and we’re going to have to start to really fight.”
DOOLAN admits that he would take any sort of victory against Neil McCann’s men, and he says that Thistle are fully ready to claw and scrap their way to three vital points if that’s what it takes.
“Sometimes that’s exactly what is needed,” he said.
“You’re not going to go out and win 5-0, it might just be a 1-0 or a 2-1 win that you scrape through because those kind of games prove that you want it.
“I think that will be the kind of game that ends up getting us kick-started.”