Abdul Osman says that Partick Thistle must learn from their second-half collapse against Hearts on Saturday, admitting that their heads went down as soon as they conceded a second goal shortly after half-time.
The captain was candid enough to admit that such a reaction was unacceptable, and now he has challenged his teammates to take the lessons from the match into the rest of the season.
He said: “It was a disappointing game for us all.
“We played well in the first-half and we were full of confidence coming back out after the break, but we didn’t show up in the second half which was very disappointing.
“We’ve had three decent results before this so it’s hard to explain. We’ll watch the video back and try to learn from it.
“I can’t really put my finger on what went wrong. We felt a bit deflated when they scored the second goal. That sort of killed the game off a bit for us.
“As captain all you can really do in that situation is try to encourage the boys and lead by example by trying to get around the pitch and close people down. We need to do that collectively though, which we didn’t do, and that’s disappointing.
“Hopefully it was just a blip. I thought we were very good first half and if we could have gone in at 0-0 it would probably have been easier to carry that performance into the second half, but unfortunately they scored a goal which boosted their confidence.
“The result won’t affect us though. We just need to keep working hard on the training field and learn from this.”
The Firhill side’s first chance at redemption comes with this Saturday’s visit to Dens Park - a game which Osman believes presents a perfect opportunity to get back on track.
“Every game from now on is going to be very important,” he said, “but the game against Dundee is a game we can win.
“We played Dundee earlier in the season and it was a game we felt we should have won. It didn’t happen like that unfortunately, but we’ll go into it full of confidence.
“I remember going up there last year and we acquitted ourselves well and the gaffer was happy with our performance, so it’s a venue where we feel as if we can go and play well.
“It’s still fairly early, we won’t be looking at the table too much until about February. Right now it’s just about trying to get a many points on the board as possible.”
There was some brighter news for Partick Thistle fans yesterday as goalkeeper Tomas Cerny escaped the shackles of his protective boot for a spot of training.
Saturday’s game will come too early for him though, and with Ryan Scully suspended after his red card against Hearts, Paul Gallacher should be in goal for Alan Archibald’s side.
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