Partick Thistle are expected to begin their search for a new manager early next week following Jackie McNamara's departure for Dundee United.
Alan Archibald, the Firhill club captain, is expected to take charge of the team for their Irn-Bru first division match away to Cowdenbeath on Saturday
McNamara signed a new one-year rolling contract with Thistle only six weeks ago. He had taken them to this season's Ramsdens Cup final as well as second place in the league.
The loss of McNamara and his assistant Simon Donnelly is a significant blow for Thistle, who have been one of Scotland's stand-out teams this season.
A number of their players commented on Twitter about their manager's departure. Conrad Balatoni, the defender, said: "As boys have said gonna be a big loss is the gaffer. Helped me a lot! But we will continue and do all we can to win this league."
Paul Paton, the midfielder, who has been with Thistle for nearly five years, added: "Absolutely gutted the gaffers left. Been great for me and for the club. Would love Archie [Archibald] to get the job, if he wants it . . ."
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 hereComments are closed on this article