Partick Thistle are preparing to build a dedicated £4million training centre, and will unveil their initial plans later today.

The club wants to have their own training facility for all first-team, youth players and their womens' team to use throughout the year.

Thistle have entered in to an agreement with Three Black Cats, a company set up by the Weir family as a vehicle for long term investments, to build the new £4m state-of-the-art facility. 

Three Black Cats was seeking a new investment project and has agreed to work with Thistle to design and build a new training ground to the club’s specification. It will then be leased to Thistle on a full commercial repairing and insuring long term lease while the assets will remain in the ownership of Three Black Cats.

Lottery winners Colin and Christine Weir have already provided funding for the club's Thistle Weir Academy.

Thistle have been splitting their time between the Garscube Sports Complex and the artificial pitch at Lesser Hampden for the last few seasons, but they will now start looking for an appropriate location to build their permanent training base.

Partick Thistle chairman, David Beattie, said: 

“It has been a long-held ambition of this club to have its own training ground. The board is ecstatic that we will now have that facility. Most importantly, it won’t just be for first team use but for our youth academy, women’s team and everyone else who is part of our football club.

“We are grateful to Three Black Cats for their vote of confidence in us. Ian Maxwell will lead for the Thistle side in this project to ensure that this training ground will for work us in the years ahead. The money we currently spend on facilities around Glasgow will be used to service our lease and costs at the new ground.

“I can’t emphasise enough the significance of this new facility. It reinforces that we are an established Premiership club, with a level of professionalism and ambition that these new facilities will reflect.”

More to follow...