Partick Thistle v Inverness: the shared opponents tell the tale
Barrie Moran previews Partick Thistle against Inverness at Firhill, looking at recent form, the sides both have faced and August's draw.
By Barrie Moran,
Partick Thistle conceded one goal in their two matches against Queen's Park and Dunfermline. Inverness conceded seven against the same two clubs. Five matches of form apiece is not much to build a case on, but when two sides have faced the same opposition and come away with such different numbers, that is the place to start.
Two trips, two very different afternoons
Thistle won 1-0 at Queen's Park on 7 November and drew 1-1 at Dunfermline on 20 October. Neither result was spectacular, but both were hard to argue with, and neither saw them lose.
Inverness went to the same grounds and came home with nothing. They lost 2-1 at Queen's Park on 13 October, which is a narrow enough defeat to shrug off, and then 5-1 at Dunfermline on 31 October, which is not. Those two games produced two goals for Inverness and seven against. Thistle's equivalent figures are two for and one against. Same goals scored, wildly different goals conceded, and that gap is the story of this fixture on paper.
Thistle's form, with one wobble at home
Thistle come in with three wins, a draw and a defeat from their last five, eight goals scored and four conceded, and three clean sheets. The wins at Ayr United and Queen's Park were both 1-0, and the 3-0 against Stenhousemuir at Firhill was comfortable.
The defeat is the result worth noting, because it came at home. Greenock Morton won 3-2 at Firhill on 31 October, the only time in this run that Thistle conceded more than once. It looks like an outlier next to the rest of their recent results, but it happened on the same pitch Inverness will play on, so it should not be waved away.
Inverness: two good weeks either side of a bad night
Inverness have two wins, a draw and two defeats from their last five, with seven scored and eight conceded. Their best spell was a good one: 2-0 at home to Arbroath on 17 October and 2-0 at Raith Rovers a week later, with clean sheets in both. Then came the five at Dunfermline, followed by a 1-1 draw at home to Livingston last weekend.
So there is a side in there that can keep things tight. The question is which one turns up. The Raith result shows they can win away from home, but the trips to Queen's Park and Dunfermline make it look more like the exception than the rule.
The only recent meeting
The sides drew 1-1 in Inverness on 21 August. One match, played nearly three months ago at the other ground, tells you only that Inverness have not been beaten by Thistle in the most recent meeting. It is a fair warning against assuming this is straightforward, and not much more.
Verdict
I lean towards a Thistle win. Their defending over the last month has been the more reliable of the two, and the results against shared opponents point the same way. They have been doing it mostly by the odd goal, so I would not expect a rout.
What would change my mind is the Inverness of mid-October. If they defend the way they did against Arbroath and Raith, and Thistle's home defence looks more like the Morton game than the Stenhousemuir one, a repeat of August's draw is well within reach. On balance, though, I think Thistle are the better bet to take the points at Firhill.