PARTICK Thistle recovered from the loss of a first-half goal to take all three points against Airdrie and get their League One season up and running.
Firhill manager Ian McCall was irked by comments in the build-up to the game from Sean Crighton, the Airdrie captain, who had suggested that Thistle had underestimated the magnitude of the task that lies ahead of them this season in engineering a way out of the league and back to the Championship, the league they were ousted from in contentious circumstances this summer.
“The Airdrie captain said that we would take League One lightly,” said McCall. “I don’t know how he came to that conclusion after we had played just one game but I think you can see from that performance that we respect every team.
“There is no game that will be easy. Looks at Hearts and Arbroath on Friday night. We know that we will have to work our socks off to win any game of football in this league. There are odd results all over the place and if you look at this league you can see the results.”
There was no shortage of endeavour from Thistle yesterday as they withstood a robust 20-minute finale with Airdrie using their physicality and set-pieces to try to wrestle a point from the encounter.
Over the 90 minutes, however, Thistle had done enough to take all three.
Brian Graham had cancelled out Dale Carrick’s opener after he had combined with Shea Gordon to put the teams level going into the interval, but for the opening stages of the second period there was an inevitability about Thistle adding to their lead.
Blair Spittal thwacked a rasping 25-yard drive off the post and the woodwork was still reeling when he curled in an impressive effort to put the Firhill side ahead just a minute later.
In between times, Airdrie had claimed vociferously for a penalty with manager Ian Murray still frustrated about the way that panned out after the game.
“The players were adamant they should have had it and then they go up to the other end of the park and score,” said Murray. “I thought the very least we deserved from this was a point – the very least.
“I was really disappointed to go into the break level because I thought we had been the better team so to take nothing from the game is a hard one to take.”
Airdrie got their campaign off to a winning start last weekend and might well have nicked a draw just at the death.
Thistle were resilient as they held on for all three points and will now look to try to build some momentum as the campaign is played out against the complexities of the Covid-19 challenges.
“I thought Darren Brownlie was the best player on the park,” a content McCall said. “The way that Airdrie play, they were on top of him but I thought he won every header going.
“I thought we thoroughly deserved the win. I know the last 15 or 20 minutes of the second half saw Airdrie try and push themselves into it but I am not sure that they really genuinely threatened us at any time.
“It was a cracking goal for us that was the winner and over the piece I think we merited that.
“I thought we did fairly well in our League Cup games and this now gives us something to go and build on in the league.”
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