DARREN BROWNLIE says Ian McCall's vision of Partick Thistle's future convinced the defender to move to Firhill - and was full of praise for his new team-mates after facing off against them many times during his career.

The 24-year-old centre-half joined the Championship strugglers from Queen of the South earlier this week and has been impressed with his new manager and fellow Jags during his short time in Maryhill so far.

When asked about McCall, Brownlie replied: "The manager has been brilliant. He’s told me his plans. His vision [is impressive]. He makes you feel good about yourself as well, he gives you confidence.

Glasgow Times:

"But it’s up to us now. The manager can only do so much, out on the park it’s up to us. It’s a good group of boys here and a lot of them are really experienced so they’ve probably been in similar positions over their career.

"I’ve always found big Brian Graham difficult, he’s really physical. I’ve played against Zak Rudden too and he’s always a difficult with his movement. Those two will be really good up top. I looked at [O’Ware] as well when he was at Morton, I think it was that season where he scored all those goals. Big Tam is good so I’m looking forward to getting a good partnership with him.

"Even the first day I was in, you wouldn’t have thought [we’re in a relegation battle]. The mood is good, there’s experienced boys in here so they’re not going to get dragged down. It starts [tonight] and we need to get the win."

Brownlie is expected to be thrown straight into the Thistle starting line-up for tonight's visit of Ayr, and believes it is imperative that he re-starts his Firhill career - he was part of the under-20s squad in the 2013/14 season - with a win.

Glasgow Times:

"Ayr have picked up a couple of good results in the last couple of weeks. It’s not going to be easy but it’s coming to the stage where we need to start winning games," he said.

"They’ve got a lot of pace up top. The times we played against them at Queens, we did really well against them. But they are a good team, they’ve got experience in there so we’re expecting it to be difficult."

• Darren Brownlie was promoting the new Partick Thistle branded taxis - Glasgow Taxis is official taxi provider to the club and match sponsor of this Friday's match against Ayr United