Ian McCall still searching for Partick Thistle's balance ahead of Dunfermline clash

The Jags head to East End Park tomorrow afternoon to face a Dunfermline team that they have already locked horns with this term, with the Pars winning 4-2 when the two Championship sides met in the Premier Sports Cup.

Some haphazard defending proved costly that day for the Jags, and McCall admits that there is still some tactical tinkering to be done to fine-tune his team – but with a two-week gap before Thistle’s next league fixture against Arbroath, the 56-year-old is confident he will put the time on the training pitch to good use.

“There’s been a lot of progress [in the transfer market] but we won’t have anybody in before Dunfermline,” McCall explained. “There might be a couple of young boys going out the way and three or four – we hope – coming in.

“One would have been done this week but the player in question has a strain so there’s been a delay. It’s ongoing but we still have three weeks.

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“[The break] gives us time. We can work on a lot of things, and I think the boys are going to have a game of golf as well. It’s come at a good time as it lets us do some real work on the training ground.

“We’re searching for the right balance – that might be playing with a back three. About 24 years ago when I first started as a manager, I played a back three for five or six years. It kind of went out of vogue for a decade and it’s come back into fashion now.

“You need to have the players suitable for it. It’s not something I would rule out but the big thing is that we’re searching for the right balance in the team.

“Right now we have a very good squad of players in my opinion, and we still have three or four to add that I think will make us better.”

Another victory would make it two wins in two in the league from Thistle this season but McCall is expecting a tight game in Fife. That meeting in the League Cup last month was open and both sides deserved credit for attacking the match and trying to seize the initiative – something that the Thistle boss feels makes the upcoming encounter all the more enticing.

“I don’t know if we dominated it but the score easily could have been 5-4 to either team, it was a terrific game,” McCall recounted. “We lost the game through a 13-minute spell when we made too many mistakes.

“Both teams look to score goals – although now I’ve said that it’ll finish 0-0! I think it will be an entertaining game. There will be 2000 Pars fans in and it should be a good watch. We’re looking forward to going there.”

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One man adorned in red-and-yellow will be intimately familiar with his opponents at East End Park: Lewis Mayo, the on-loan Rangers defender who spent last season with the Pars.

McCall is expecting big things from the 21-year-old this term but admitted that the defender could struggle to offer insights into what to expect from Dunfermline after former manager Stevie Crawford was replaced by Peter Grant, with the new boss ushering in a new style of play at the club.

“The only thing is that Lewis played the vast majority of his games at right-back and central midfield,” McCall reasoned. “I won’t say that he won’t fill in there for us every now and then but I want him to be the No.1 centre-back here.

“I said to him that he has the potential to be the best centre-back in the league and that’s the challenge for him. He did ever so well last week and he’s got all the attributes to be a top centre-half. He’s a great kid.

“He knows some of the players but they play a completely different system now with Peter there.

“I’ve got great respect for Peter – he’s a super guy and his boys are the most well-mannered boys you’ll ever meet. We actually played in the same Celtic youth team a long, long time ago.

“He sets his teams up to play a certain way and so do I, albeit we’re still searching for the balance in our team. It may be rather than shoehorning the players that we think will do a good job in, maybe one or two of them will have to miss out and work hard to get into the team.”

Another new addition, former Ayr United attacker Cammy Smith, made his debut after clambering off the bench against Queen of the South last week and McCall has told supporters they won’t have long to wait before the 25-year-old is a regular feature in the first team.

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He said: “If you look at him in training he’s a quality player: there’s no doubt about that. I think [he’ll be starting games] sooner rather than later but we have to be aware that he didn’t do a lot of training and had to self-isolate for 10 days.

“So him and [Scott] Tiffoney have both haven’t done a lot of training. But in two weeks there will be four or five of them that will be really up to speed.

“I thought Cammy looked really sharp when he came on and Tiffoney … he really produces in games when it matters, and he has done ever since he’s been here. With that type of pace he’s a real threat.”

Smith and Tiffoney may be prospects bursting with potential and will likely play a key role once they’re fully up to speed at Firhill, but there’s another player on the books in Glasgow’s west end who has wasted no time in getting up and running this season: Brian Graham, the 33-year-old striker who has six goals in five outings already this term.

McCall admits that he has been a little surprised by just how many goals the big centre-forward has racked up since pitching up at Firhill in January 2020 – but insisted his value to the team goes way beyond his composure in front of goal.

“He’s scored something like 20 in 33 games [since arriving] but that’s why we signed him,” McCall reasoned. “I must admit that I told him that I didn’t sign him because he’s a prolific goal scorer but I thought maybe 12 to 15 goals each season was a reasonable expectation. But he’s exceeded that.

“He helps out in his own box and has an insatiable desire to win, which rubs off on other people, and he’s a huge part of the club.”