Shrew-d move staying at Jags
PARTICK GAFFER’S GOOD CALL Archibald is so glad he stayed at Firhill instead of going south
ALAN ARCHIBALD has revealed he had the chance to become Shrewsbury boss in January but the Partick Thistle gaffer and his board rejected a move.
It’s fair to say both parties now feel totally vindicated by that decision.
Archibald has just steered the Jags into the Premiership top six for the first time since the league split was introduced.
And the club received another boost earlier this week when they struck a deal to build a new £4million training ground.
Thistle were languishing in the bottom two when Shrewsbury came calling so Archibald admits he’s glad the board fought to keep him as they plotted a revival.
And he insists everyone at the club is pulling in the same direction as they try to establish the Jags as top-six regulars.
The 39-year-old said: “It does feel like the right decision to turn down Shrewsbury. It’s not that I turned it down on my own.
“We’ve got a really good board here and everybody is working in the one direction. There is not one person who is not happy and wants to go in a different direction
“We are all in it together – at board level, first-team level and academy level. There are plenty of other managers who are envious of me.
“I speak to some other guys who say the board have stuck by me. When I’ve had a bad run, they come and ask me if they can help. They don’t say, ‘You need to win on Saturday’. It’s, ‘What can we do to help you?’.
“If you’re ever going to move on, you want to have that kind of structure.”
Archibald confessed sealing that top-six spot was a relief more than anything as it meant Thistle would avoid the relegation dogfight at the bottom. Now he hopes to avoid that every season and pinpointed St Johnstone as the benchmark.
He said: “Being in the top six didn’t sink in at the weekend. The biggest thing was relief.
“Scott Paterson and I sat in the office and all we could think about was ‘thank god we don’t need to look about at the results and who’s playing who next week’. Believe me, when you’re involved in that, it’s horrible.
“You can’t book a holiday, you can’t plan pre-season.
“But we won’t rest on our laurels. We know how tough it is. Motherwell were in the top six last year – now they’re struggling. You have to be consistent. St Johnstone finish in the top six season after season and that has to be the benchmark for us.”
Archibald reckons having a new state-of-the-art training base will help Jags recruitment policy.
He said: “It has been a brilliant week. Patrick Thistle are in the top six and will be getting a training ground – you don’t hear that in the same sentence too often.
“A training complex can only help us when it comes to signing players.
“When I signed somebody a couple of years ago, I told them the Science Park was our training facility. That was a wee porky pie but I won’t need to lie to anyone now. This complex will help us compete with our rivals.”