Ade Azeez was hit with a hefty dental bill after an accident in training last week, but the Partick Thistle striker says the kick in the teeth from missing a late chance at Kilmarnock was just as painful.

One of his young teammates accidentally caught the Englishman flush on the face with an elbow to rearrange his front teeth and fracture his jaw in a challenge ahead of the visit to Rugby Park.

The patched-up frontman came on as a substitute in the game and latched onto a high ball in the dying stages with the scores locked at two goals apiece.

As the ball bounced up for him, he tried to lift it over the advancing Jamie MacDonald, but didn’t get enough on the attempt allowing the Killie keeper to get a hand up to save.

It rounded off an agonising week for Azeez, who admits it wasn’t just the pain from his mouth that kept him awake on Saturday night.

“It wasn’t nice, I’ll tell you that!” Azeez said.

“In training I went up for a header with David Syme, and he’s caught me with one of his elbows.

“It was obviously accidental and he’s not meant to do it, but it’s just one of those things and it ended up fracturing part of my jaw.

“It pushed my front two teeth right back into my mouth, so I’m playing with a mouthguard now.

“I felt like crying that day when I saw them, not because of the pain, but more the shock of how my teeth looked! I had a picture of it and it looked horrible, it was really bad.

“David better take the bill! He was apologetic, he’s young and he’s just a bit clumsy at times. He didn’t mean any harm by it.”

Azeez felt that the ball had bounced up perfectly for him to lob home on Saturday, but in hindsight, he admits he might have been better to favour power over precision.

“It was a sleepless night for sure on Saturday,” he said.

“I knew that the minute I got to the ball before the defender that the keeper was going to come rushing off his line, so I tried to take it as early as I could and get it over him.

“It’s a bit frustrating that I didn’t get as much on it as I wanted and it was definitely a bit of a struggle to get to sleep that night.

“I had a chat with the gaffer about it and he said that maybe if I had tried to put my laces through it then it might have gone under him, but at the time I really thought the lob was the best option.

“It was a split-second decision, but looking back at it now I guess I might have done it differently. It’s a learning curve I suppose.”

Azeez is looking forward to this weekend’s clash against Motherwell, and he is hoping that some of the luck that seems to be falling the way of their in-form striker Louis Moult can rub off on him.

The former Wimbledon man is sure that once he gets his first league goal, he can settle into the sort of groove that the Fir Park number nine is currently enjoying.

“Moult will be full of confidence at the moment,” he said. “He’ll feel like he can do anything, and it’s weird, every little thing seems to fall for you when you’re in that kind of mood.

“The ball seems to just drop to you and it’s a great feeling, it boosts your confidence so much.

“I feel like that’s what I need, I really want to get my first goal in the Scottish league, but it’s just not dropping for me."