PARTICK THISTLE have completed the signing of Adam Barton on a three-year deal from Portsmouth for an undisclosed fee.
Barton, who is renowned for his range of passing, has primarily played as a central midfielder but has latterly been used as a centre-half by Portsmouth manager Paul Cook.
The 25-year-old from Clitheroe has been capped at full international level by Northern Ireland, after previously turning out for the Republic of Ireland at under-21 level.
Barton started his professional career at Preston North End and was loaned to Crawley Town before moving on to Coventry City in 2012.
He was loaned to Fleetwood Town after falling out of favour under manager Andy Thorn, but returned to establish himself at the Ricoh Arena under Steven Pressley and Tony Mowbray before moving on to Fratton Park last summer.
Meanwhile, striker Mathias Pogba and goalkeeper David Crawford have both left Firhill by mutual consent.
Pogba has struggled to break into the Thistle starting eleven since joining the club, scoring just two league goals – both against Hamilton – and once in the League cup against Stenhousemuir.
Former Alloa keeper Crawford had been brought in by Alan Archibald during the summer due to injuries to first-choice Tomas Cerny and understudy Ryan Scully, and played in the League Cup group stages.
Meanwhile Callum Booth, the left-back, says it was cold comfort that Thistle emerged from two difficult fixtures against Aberdeen and Hearts with plenty of credit for their displays.
The defender says the Firhill club can no longer accept pats on the back for valiant performances against the league’s big guns.
Booth reckons that Celtic, Rangers, Hearts and Aberdeen are a cut above the rest of the teams in this season’s Premiership, but that shouldn’t stop Thistle aiming to beat them every time they play them.
“It was absolutely gutting to come away from those two games with zero points,” Booth said.
“We’ve been in the Premiership for four seasons now, so we can’t go into these games thinking a point is a good result, because there’s 12 games in the season now where you are going to be up against the four top teams.
“We can’t go into them thinking ‘oh, a point is good here’, we’ve got to start thinking that we can take points off the bigger teams every time we play them."
“Since I’ve been here we’ve been really poor against the bigger sides, and even last season where we had a couple of good performances away at Parkhead and at home to Aberdeen, we still got beaten in the end.
“That’s the same story with these two games, but I feel that we’re definitely going in the right direction, and we have to remain upbeat.
“It could definitely be a big factor in where we end up, so we have to take points against them as well as the teams that are in and around us.
“The positives are that we played really well in the last two games, and we could easily be sitting here with at least two or three points from them, so we just need to keep going in that direction.
“We’re going to have a lot of hard games this year with four of the so-called top teams in the country in the division, but we have good belief and hope going forward that we can really compete with them.”
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