Loanee Mayo tipped to make grade at Ibrox by Thistle manager

IAN McCALL has worked with his fair share of promising youngsters from Ibrox over the years. As a former player himself, the Partick Thistle manager has a strong relationship with Rangers and has used it to his advantage on plenty of occasions.

Since returning to Firhill as manager a little over two years ago, seven players have made the short journey from Govan to Maryhill. With the exception of Zak Rudden, recently snapped up by Dundee, all were loan moves. Lewis Mayo, Jamie Barjonas, Kieran Wright, Rhys Breen, Mayo (again), Jake Hastie and most recently Andy Firth have all been brought in on temporary deals during McCall’s tenure, with varying degrees of success.

Mayo only managed three appearances during his first stint at Thistle before the season was called as the pandemic first broke out in Scotland and he spent the following campaign on loan at Dunfermline. His time at East End Park was a little hit-andmiss but since returning to Thistle he has struck upon the most valuable defensive characteristic of them all: consistency.

“Lewis has been terrific,” McCall says. “The big thing about Lewis Mayo is… any of the players that have come from Rangers or Celtic for me over the years have always been really grounded and humble people.

“That’s what Lewis is and he’s done really well. He has a lot of attributes and I think he still has a future at Rangers. There’s a chance he’ll still be here next season if we manage to go up, who knows. He’s been part of a back four where we’ve interchanged it a few times but his level of consistency has been really good. He’s still got a lot of things to learn – we were just speaking there about communicating more. But he’s still only 21 which is very, very young for a centre-back.”

Mayo’s time in Maryhill thus far has been pretty impressive. His move infield to play in central defence alongside Tunji Akinola – another promising young defender who arrived at Thistle after leaving West Ham last summer – coincided with a run of eight games where they did not ship a single goal. It was a club record for consecutive clean sheets and Mayo played the full 90 minutes in all but one match, that he missed as he was part of Scot Gemmill’s Scotland Under-21s squad.

Mayo is happy to be settled and getting a run of games in his preferred position but the defender reckons his stints in other areas of the park have made him a more rounded player.

“Both experiences have been good,” he says. “It’s definitely a good learning experience as a young player to play different positions. That has definitely helped me a lot and I take confidence from that.

“Having the ability to play with both feet and the awareness to play in different areas on the park will definitely help me. But looking forward now, the best thing for me is to play my position and play it every week. I’ve been building on that this season and taking pride in a team that’s been successful.

“[The clean sheet record] is another thing to take confidence from. You still need a little bit of luck at the end of the day and in a couple of games we didn’t get that. But we can use that going forward – even if we’re not on the same sort of run, there’s no reason we can’t do that again. It’s built on good habits and good discipline throughout the team.”

Those good habits have been instilled in Mayo from a young age. .

“Coming through at Rangers and with my experiences with Scotland, you play against some big names in terms of teams and countries,” he says.

“It trains you not to be scared of anyone. It instils a mindset where it’s all about what you do, not what they do – if you perform, you can beat anyone. You learn that

confidence and trust in the team that you’re in.”