Kris Doolan demands help from Partick team-mates as Thistle seek cutting edge

Author: Anne KanePublished 3rd Dec 2017

Partick Thistle striker Kris Doolan has told his team-mates it is time they started chipping in with goals.

Alan Archibald's side find themselves four points adrift at the bottom of the Ladbrokes Premiership after Saturday's 1-0 defeat to Hibernian.

Yet the Jags had chances to take something from the Energy Check Stadium, with Doolan guilty of failing to bury a second-half opportunity shortly after Adam Barton's own-goal put the visitors ahead.

But the Thistle poacher reckons his colleagues cannot expect he and frontman Miles Storey to shoulder the scoring burden on their own.

The Jags are the lowest scorers in the top flight with just 12 goals so far.

''I personally still feel confident in front of goal,'' Doolan, 30, told Press Association Sport. ''Scoring is what I do.

I was unlucky with the chance I got. I was just trying to make sure I kept it down as those chances are the type that often end up going over the bar but the keeper just got a toe to it.

But as a team we need to be scoring more. It's not always the strikers who have to get the goals.

The goals have to come from elsewhere, too, and as a team we need to be a bit more ruthless.

I think maybe the pressure of where we are in the table is making us snatch at some of the chances and we need to make a conscious effort not to do that in future.

That's the worst thing you can do. You need to have a calm head in the box and make sure you finish, otherwise you will keep missing chances to climb the table.''

While Thistle's position continues to alarm the Maryhill faithful, Neil Lennon's Hibs are only looking up.

The Northern Irishman wants his team to push Rangers and Aberdeen for second place.

But the former Celtic boss had to take the unusual step of marching onto the pitch to deliver a last-minute pep talk just before the second half kicked off, following their lifeless display in the first 45 minutes.

However, according to winger Martin Boyle, it was just what the Leith team needed.

He said: ''The manager is always trying to rally us up because he's a winner. That's central to his mentality.

He wants to implement that into the club here and he's certainly done that. He hates losing.

Sometimes even when we win he is having a go at us but he's been brilliant for us this season and that wee chat certainly got us going.''