AARON MUIRHEAD insists form will go out the window when Partick Thistle take on Ross County or Kilmarnock (barring a minor miracle in this afternoon’s final fixtures) over two legs in the Premiership play-off final.
The Thistle defender was involved in a key moment in Friday night’s emphatic 5-0 victory over Ayr United at Somerset that sealed an 8-0 aggregate passage to the final when Dipo Akinyemi, the hosts’ talismanic forward, was sent off for throwing an arm in the Jags stopper’s direction.
And while the impressive run the Firhill outfit have enjoyed since Kris Doolan took over from Ian McCall, unbeaten in their lasts 10 games, has seen a barrowload of goals scored, defender Muirhead has been just as pleased with how the Maryhill men have kept the back door shut as a platform for the attacking players to perform.
“It was great to get the win. You can see we are full of confidence at the moment,” Muirhead said. “The attacking players especially are scoring goals and creating great chances.
“We’re on a great run of form and hopefully we can keep it up. Keeping it tight at the back obviously helps. Positive results are built on a solid base. “We’ve had that security at the back over these last two or three games in the play-offs.
“When we’ve got players in top form like we do at the top end of the pitch, we just try and do our job defensively and let them go and win the game for us. That’s what they’ve been doing.
“We will obviously watch the games on Sunday and keep our eye on it. Hopefully we can do the business and end up getting promoted.”
“I don’t tend to get too bogged down in terms of who has an advantage,” Muirhead added looking ahead to the first leg at Firhill on Thursday. “People thought Ayr probably had a bit of an advantage because they had a bit of a rest coming into these games.
“People will say we’ve got a bit of momentum. But you just need to take the games in isolation and keep going.
“We need to focus on ourselves. People might say other teams won’t fancy playing us because of the form we’re in, but we’ll just focus on ourselves.”
Muirhead was targeted with chants of “cheat” by sections of the home ground following his reaction to Akinyemi’s petulant striking out in the 25th minute, but the former Honest Man insists the brickbats were water off a duck’s back in the heat of battle at his former home ground and says the English forward only has himself to blame for being ordered off after connecting with his face.
“I knew I would get a bit of stick when I came back to Somerset,” he said. “It was just handbags really, but he shouldn’t have raised his hands like that. “I was getting called a cheat. But if you raise your hands, you give the referee a decision to make. “His hand hit me in the face. It wasn’t a punch, but he still raised his hand and hit me in the face. “He never said anything to me afterwards, but I think he knew himself what the decision would be. “Every time I touched the ball after that the fans were giving me stick and calling me a cheat. “It’s part and parcel of it. But I don’t want that to take away from what a good performance it was from us as a team.” Muirhead insists the priority for Thistle now is simply to get over the line by any means necessary, as he target a return to the top flight having had a taste of Premiership action with the Maryhill side. “I would love to get back to the Premiership. At the start of the season, that’s obviously your goal,” he said. “You look at the way the fans are backing us at the minute, it’s phenomenal. “That’s why I came back to Thistle, to try and help get the club promoted again. “We know there’s a long way to go, two very tough games. We’ll be raring to go for Thursday.” For Ayr’s Josh Mullin, meanwhile, it was a bitter end to a season once so full of promise for the Ayrshire side. “Yeah, look, I think it’s been a massive season for the club,” Mullin said. “I’m hearing it’s the highest Championship finish in our history. “But it’s frustrating when you go on your holidays off the back of two results like that. “It’s hard to then look at it as a positive, but you always try to pick out the positives and that’s what we need to do. “It’s been a magnificent season, and it will just need to go one better next season.”
