Jags’newbabyKeown faces a baptism of fire
PARTICK THISTLE manager Alan Archibald says he may pitch new signing Niall Keown straight into the starting 11 for Saturday’s trip to Inverness.
Reading defender Keown completed his move to the Jags on loan for the rest of the season on Wednesday afternoon, but he has been training with the club for the past few weeks.
The club trip to La Manga allowed both parties to size one another up, and they liked what they saw of one another.
And with suspensions to key players and the departure of Ziggy Gordon to Jagiellonia Białystok, he could get an early chance to show the Thistle support just what he can do.
“It’s good that he’s been with us for a wee while and we could get a look at him and he could get a look at us,” Archibald said.
“It doesn’t feel as if it’s just a new signing this week because he’s been part of the group already.
“We’re delighted to get him signed up. He’ll be in the squad for Saturday and we’ve no concerns about playing him.
“We have a couple of suspensions with Danny Devine and Abdul being out, so he comes into contention.”
Keown has featured just twice for Reading, but that doesn’t concern Archibald, even though he admits he wouldn’t normally take a punt on someone with so little first-team experience.
“We don’t usually take first loans, we usually like to see them out on loan at a couple of other teams first, but we got a chance to look at him and we liked what we saw when he was in Spain with us,” he said.
“I like the type of defender he is, and that’s why we’ve went for him. There were other guys out there, but we felt we were better to go with the younger, hungrier type rather than someone a bit older.
“He fitted in with the group really well too, and that was another good thing about going to Spain.”
With Devine absent, it will be a relief for Thistle fans to hear that Liam Lindsay should be fine for the trip north after recovering from surgery on his nose.
“It was more of a precaution that he didn’t play last week,” Archibald explained.
“He’s fine, he’s got a mask that he can wear for protection but it’s horrible, it makes him look even worse. It’s a big black one. It’s awful, he looks like Zorro or something.
“He’s taking a bit of stick. To be fair, the one he had before was even worse, that was horrific, it was like a scuba diving mask. He couldn’t see the ball right so this one is much better, it’s custom-fit so he can have no complaints.”
Thistle eased their way back into action with a comfortable win over Formartine in the Scottish Cup last week, maintaining the confident mood in the squad after their good form over the festive season.
Archibald knows though that they must raise their performance levels again if they want to prolong their decent run.
“Hopefully we can continue in that vein of form, but we’ve got three tough games (against Inverness, St Johnstone and Aberdeen) coming up,” he said.