Ian McCall relishing Somerset Park return ahead of Ayr United test as he issues ‘more to come’ claim from Partick Thistle side

The Jags boss has guided the Scottish Championship outfit to six matches unbeaten
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Ian McCall is looking forward to returning to his old stomping ground Somerset Park this afternoon and has warned his players of the electric atmosphere awaiting them.

The Partick Thistle manager will take his side to former club Ayr United as they bid to extend their unbeaten run to seven league games.

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A lot have changed since McCall left the Ayrshire outfit in September 2019, with only two players remaining from his time in charge.

However, the Jags boss would love a repeat of their 4-0 demolition of Jim Duffy’s team in September.

He said: “I was there five years and it’s amazing how quickly things change. I left just over two years ago and there aren’t many of my players left.

“There’s Murdy (Andy Murdoch) and big Aero (Aaron Muirhead). I think that’s about it. The goalie coach is still there and so is the physio but there’s even a new chairman so it’s very different now.

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“I’m really looking forward to going back, it’s a magic ground to play at. We’ll need to be really at it to get something out of the game, which I know better than most.

“I always tell Willie Houston, who’s in charge of the ground, that he should always get the park better and he hates me for saying that!

“The Somerset Road end only needs a couple thousand in it and it creates a hell of an atmosphere.”

Last Saturday’s 1-0 victory over Kilmarnock ended a run of three matches without a goal and McCall acknowledged a gap is slowly starting to appear between the top five teams and bottom five.

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He stated: “It was really important we got the early goal (against Kilmarnock) as it turned a couple of 0-0s into good results.

“The Inverness game, I thought they out-played us but we’ve not lost many goals. If you look at the six games, you can say we’ve scored 11 goals.

“Okay, we’ve done it in a pretty unusual way but it is a fact nonetheless.

“You saw on Saturday how one result, and the other teams in the top half all drawing, it just really squeezed the league.

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“There’s only five points between us and top and a couple of points in between so it’s very, very tight.

“I think there is starting to be a gap between the top five and the bottom five, albeit there’s still plenty of time for one of them to go on a run as well.

“Ayr are in that bottom five but will be thinking they can make it even smaller. I do expect one of the teams in the bottom half to go on a run, I don’t know what one, but we can only concentrate on ourselves.

“We’re playing with a lot of confidence and there’s an awful lot of good spirit about the players, so we need to keep going

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“We do feel we should be five or six points better off just now with the way things have gone. It’s just a matter of being productive in the top end of the pitch.”

The Jags have been joined as Scottish Championship top scorers by Arbroath in recent weeks, but McCall knows there is more improvement to come providing his threadbare squad don’t require any trips to the treatment room.

He added: “I think we’ll get better. We had horrendous bad luck with injuries in the first half of last season, it was just so bad.

“We had something like five knee operations. We’ve lost Darren Brownlie, who for us is one of the best centre-backs in the league, but we’ve been lucky with injuries.

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“We’re running with 17 players and touch wood, they’ve been fit for eight or nine weeks in a row now.

“That’s got to continue and hopefully in January I may be able to do something where I get a couple in and extend one or two players’ contracts. It’s a matter of just getting to there with this size of squad.

“I’ve said it before - this size of squad, it’s small but you saw Connor Murray coming in on Saturday and doing really well, so everyone is capable of coming in and playing.”

McCall will be forced to alter his defensive line with centre-back Lewis Mayo away on Scotland Under-21 duty.

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McCall admitted: “He’ll be a miss. Lewis and Tunji (Akinola) have formed a very good partnership at the back. He played very well at Rugby Park last weekend.

“There are a couple of options – we can deal with it. We don’t have an over-abundance of defenders but Ciaron (McKenna) can go in there or (Kevin) Holty can play centre-back so there are a number of ways we can deal with it.”

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