Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald is hopeful of signing former Motherwell player Tom Hateley after selling the club to him at a meeting this week.
Archibald is aware that there are other potential suitors interested in securing Hateley’s signature following his release from Polish side Slask Wroclaw.
The Jags boss knows that clubs such as Hibs, Dundee and Wigan – who have all been credited with an interest in the 26-year-old – have deeper pockets than his own club.
Read more: Hibs boss Neil Lennon facing competition to sign Tom Hateley
He is optimistic though that by pushing the benefits of life at Firhill, including a willingness to play him in his preferred central midfield position, may tip the scales in their favour.
“I met Tom Hateley for a brief chat the other day and that’s as far as it has went,” Archibald said. “We left it at that and I believe he has a number of options, we’re aware of that.
“We’ve sold our side of the club to him and hopefully that will be enough.
“The club is in Glasgow, we play good football and we’re a shop window.
“We can’t always compete financially, so we just try to sell every aspect of the club that we can and see where that takes us.
“I don’t see him as a right-back and that may work in our favour. I tried to sign him a few years ago as a right-back and he went to Poland to be a central midfielder.
“I had a chat with him then as well so I’m aware of his strengths and I know he can play there, but we’ve got Ziggy Gordon at right-back and we’ve got Christie Elliott who can play there as well.
“We really need cover in the middle of the pitch, as you can see this week with Sean Welsh missing.
“It leaves us really, really light because Gary Fraser is out and Stuart Bannigan is out long-term now as well.”
Archibald’s frustration about Welsh’s late red-card last Saturday has clearly not abated in the days since the game.
With a formidable challenge being posed by the Hearts midfield this weekend, the timing could hardly have been worse for the deep-lying midfielder to be sitting in the stand.
“I said right after the Aberdeen game to him that it didn’t affect Saturday’s game because we were two-nil down at the time, but it kills us this week,” Archibald said.
“That’s the frustrating thing.
“It doesn’t matter how angry you are with the decision – I don’t think it was a booking even though it was a foul because he got the ball and the man – regardless of how frustrated you are it’s not going to change.
“David Wilson comes into contention, and the good thing is that he played a number of games in the League Cup, so we can call on him.
“We’ve also got Ryan Edwards who can play there so we’ll just have to shuffle the pack and it gives someone else to take their opportunity.”
There was further frustration at Firhill this week as Liam Lindsay was overlooked by Scotland under-21 boss Ricky Sbragia for the forthcoming matches against FYR Macedonia and Ukraine.
When asked what the young defender could do to force his way into contention, Archibald joked: “Move clubs? No, I don’t know. Not making mistakes like last week, that’s for sure.
“Liam has just got to concentrate on playing his football for Partick Thistle and eradicating his mistakes, particularly his high profile ones.
“I’ve said to him that he has a bad habit of playing well for 70 minute and then making a bad mistake that causes a goal.
“Liam needs to concentrate on playing well for Partick Thistle and the rest will take care of itself.
“It’s not my job to pick it, all we can do is keep on playing our young lads and hopefully they get noticed.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel