Ed admits sucker punch from Dee leaves Jags on the ropes in top-six race
PARTICK THISTLE midfielder Ryan Edwards feels that the Jags have given themselves a mountain to climb in their battle to stay in the Premiership after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in Saturday’s game against Dundee.
With just five minutes remaining in the match at Firhill, Thistle were leading through a first-half Conor Sammon goal and probably should have been further ahead. But their failure to convert their earlier superiority into a match-winning advantage came back to haunt them in catastrophic fashion.
With red and yellow jerseys retreating deeper and deeper as the clock ticked on, Dundee’s pressure finally told as Simon Murray grabbed a late double to turn the atmosphere in the home end on its head.
And Edwards now reckons that his side have it all to do if they are to claw themselves away from the bottom end of the table.
“It was hard to take, and it was very disappointing,” said Edwards. “It’s probably evened itself out in terms of the game back at Firhill last time when we kind of robbed Dundee, and they’ve robbed us this time.
“It was a weird game. We played really well in the first half, it was probably one of the best games we’ve played both on and off the ball. We created a number of chances, and we were probably unfortunate to only be 1-0 up.
“It was a game of two halves really. I don’t know what it is. Dundee were always going to have a spell, but we changed our shape and we can’t deal with it.
“The two late goals killed us and now we have a mountain to climb.”
On the bright side, their situation isn’t beyond recovery. Thistle are sitting in 10th place, and play the two teams below them in their next t wo matches.
On the other hand, both of those matches are away from home, and with fixtures against Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs and inform Kilmarnock also to come before the split, it will take an almighty effort from the Jags to improve their situation.
“We needed maximum points [on Saturday],” Edwards said.
“We now have two away games at probably the two toughest places to go in the division. They are going to be massively important. Ross County had a good result [against Hearts] and that shortens the gap again.
“Dundee are now pulling four points away from us, so it’s two cup finals – it’s massive.
“We never look over our shoulders or look too far ahead, we focus on ourselves, and at the moment in terms of points and position we’re still okay.”
THE most concerning thing for Edwards on Saturday was the way that Thistle folded late on to allow Dundee numerous opportunities to score, and he is worried that the old failing of losing late goals is going to become the norm once again.
“I hope that doesn’t start creeping in, because it’s a thing that’s happened to us before,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a mentality thing, and I hope it’s not, because we should be seeing the game out at 1-0 and maybe even be scoring more goals with the way we played in the first half.
“To play like we did in the second half was not good enough. We’ve got two tough games coming up away from home now, so we need to pick ourselves up and hopefully we can try to get maximum points.
“It’s something we should be recognising on the pitch as players, and it’s happened before at the start of the season when we’ve dropped off and conceded late goals.
“We haven’t got pressure on the ball and we’ve invited teams onto us. We seemed to have fixed it, and we had a spell in the middle of the season where we didn’t have that problem.
“It’s about mentality and everyone pulling together to make sure that it doesn’t happen.
“We allowed it to creep in again and that can’t happen. It’s not good enough.”