Partick Thistle boss Ian McCall expects form to go out of window in play-offs

Partick Thistle manager Ian McCall believes form will go out of the window during the play-offs as he admitted it would be “impossible” to replicate their early-season performances in Tuesday’s Firhill clash with Inverness.

Thistle’s cinch Championship title push was hampered by a poor home pitch, a backlog of fixtures and a run of injuries and they only clinched fourth place following Friday’s defeat by Ayr.

The Jags only won four of their final 16 league matches but that record is irrelevant to McCall ahead of the first leg of their Premiership play-off quarter-final in Maryhill.

“We can’t play like we did earlier in the season – it’s impossible,” said McCall, who will be back in the dugout after sitting out the trip to former club Ayr on health grounds.

“We can’t do it and no other team has done it here either. I watched the game here on Saturday with Falkirk and Queen’s Park and it was exactly the same.

“I think about 30 games have been played here in the second half of the season and they have almost all finished 0-0, 1-0 or 1-1. So that’s impossible. So we’ve had to change the way we play.

“We know that we’ve got a number of players that are good enough to play at that level and good enough to compete to win this league.

“So I’m delighted, absolutely delighted, that we managed to get fourth.

“I’m not happy with the second half of the season but there are reasons for that that I can’t control. The players are really motivated to do well and hopefully they will do well.”

Thistle will have key attackers Scott Tiffoney and Brian Graham back from injury but Kyle Turner and Kyle McAllister are likely to miss out.

McCall, whose Ayr team lost to Inverness at this stage three years ago, added: “It is cup football now but it