MIDFIELDER Adam Barton insists Partick Thistle won’t be resting on their laurels despite sealing their top-six place with a win over Motherwell on Saturday. A first-half goal from top scorer Kris Doolan was enough to see off Stephen Robinson’s side and ensured Thistle will feature in the top half of the table after the split for the first time ever.
It also guarantees the Firhill side will achieve their best final league position since 1981 but Barton doesn’t think they should be settling for sixth. Instead, the Irishman says Alan Archibald’s men are already looking at trying to see if they can reel in Hearts in fifth place.
He said: “We celebrated at the weekend for finishing in the top six but that’s now done. Our aim now is to go for fifth place and to keep moving forward. We’re not going to stop there. The lads know that. The gaffer has told us we have to be ready to go again.
“Even when we were celebrating in the changing room on Saturday we were looking at Hearts, asking how they got on and whether we could go on to catch them next. That’s our goal. Getting top six is a great achievement for the club as they have never done it before but that we want more also shows the ambition of the club and all the staff, the kitman and the physios and the rest. We don’t want to just stop now having got sixth place. We want to keep going and make it even better.”
Thistle were bottom of the Premiership table just before Christmas but have been in superlative form in the second half of the season. They are now undefeated in their last eight matches.
Barton added: “The manager reminded us after the game on Saturday that we had been bottom of the league in December and now we’re comfortable in the top six. But even at the start of the season we knew we weren’t a team that should be bottom. We didn’t feel like a bottom half team.
“We were putting in performances - like in the Rangers game - that we could have won but things weren’t just happening for us. But it feels like we had all our bad luck in the first half of the season. This week Tam [Cerny] saves the penalty at Celtic and then pulls off a brilliant save against Motherwell. Things are going well for us now. We knew things were going to turn and thankfully it’s happened.”
Archibald remains one of Scottish football’s less-heralded managers but Barton would not be surprised if the former defender was on the wish list of bigger clubs. He added: “We don’t really know what’s going on or heard much about interest in him but that doesn’t mean he’s not attracting attention from other clubs. But for now he’s here at the club and that’s all we can hope for and that he stays with us.”
Meanwhile, Keith Lasley has admitted he doesn’t want to go through play-off agony once more. The midfielder was part of the Motherwell side that defeated Rangers 6-1 on aggregate two years ago to retain their top-flight status and, although there was a happy ending on that occasion, Lasley admits the whole process was a nerve-shredding experience.
Motherwell still have six games left in which to move away from the danger area – starting with a massive match at home to Inverness Caley Thistle on Saturday – but veteran Lasley knows they will need to start playing a lot better than they showed in the first half at Firhill.
He said: “We don’t want to go through that again. It looked rosy at the end of the previous play-off experience but it certainly wasn’t much fun being in the middle of it. The guys who are still at the club know that it’s the case. That’s the message that has been imparted on to the rest of the squad.
“We are just desperate to avoid that scenario once again. Is there enough quality in the squad? There is but, as the manager said, if we turn up and play like we did it in the first half against Thistle then we’ve got as good a chance as anyone of finishing down there. But in the second half on Saturday we picked up and looked a lot more like ourselves. We feel that we have got enough to get out of this but we have to go and do it. It’s time for action, not words.”
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