Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald was at a loss to explain why his side were denied a last-gasp penalty in last night’s narrow defeat to Celtic at Firhill.

Debutant Miles Storey nicked the ball away from Celtic’s stand-in centre-half Nir Bitton in the final minute of the game, and was then sent to the deck by the defender’s clumsy attempt at a recovery challenge.

Television replays clearly showed Bitton catching the Thistle forward on the heel, but in real time, referee Andrew Dallas waved play on, much to the bemusement of the Jags faithful and Firhill boss Archibald.

And he believes that the timing of the incident and the opposition may have played a part in the official’s thinking as he turned down the appeal.

“I’ve watched it back and it’s a foul, anywhere else on the pitch it’s a foul, so I don’t know why he hasn’t given it,” Archibald said.

“It’s a big call because it’s the last minute of the game against Celtic, but we got a penalty the other night and I don’t think we were going to get two in three or four days.

“We’ve only had three in three years.”

After a rocky opening to the game where Celtic completely dominated and might have been two or three goals ahead, the home side came into their own and manufactured a couple of opportunities themselves.

The clearest one of those fell to the man that Archibald would have wanted on the end of it, striker Kris Doolan, but he managed to head Christie Elliott’s perfectly placed cross over the bar from just six yards out.

“I said before that you’ll always get a chance in the game, as long as you are in the game at one-nil you will get a half-chance, and we didn’t take it,” said Archibald.

“But look, Kris has bailed us out a number of times and it will come again. He’s not even trained all week, he just trained yesterday for the first time, so I’ll give him a bit of leeway with this one.

“But he better get the next one.”

It all added up to a frustrating night for the Thistle manager, despite the many positives that he will draw from the overall performance of his men.

Once he had tinkered with the formation to help quell the threat from Celtic’s left, principally through the early physical mismatch between Kieran Tierney and Stevie Lawless, the visitors were much less of a threat.

The central defensive partnership between Jordan Turnbull and Niall Keown looked solid, and there were promising flashes from debutants Storey, who arrived from the substitute’s bench, and Conor Sammon, who started the match.

Archibald will no doubt reflect upon those positives during the week as he picks his men up for next weekend’s quickfire return to McDiarmid Park, a happy hunting ground for his men.

In the immediate aftermath of the game though, he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that while proud of the efforts of his players, they should have made life harder for Celtic to leave Maryhill with a full complement of points.

“I’m frustrated,” he said. “The lads worked hard, and it’s hard to contain them. They caused us no end of problems down our right-hand side early on.

“Thankfully we got through that, but then we lose a disappointing goal from a set-play. I had harped on before it to not give them goals, and if you give away a set-play it’s like giving them a goal.

“There was a deflection on the way through, but we could have defended it better.”