ALAN ARCHIBALD has made a Firhill victory over Hibs the first step in his plan to open up a Home Front in Partick Thistle's bid for SPFL Premiership survival.

The Jags are yet to beat the Easter Road side in two attempts, having been undone by a single-goal defeat back in October and then had victory snatched away from them by a last-minute equaliser in Leith in December.

But with tomorrow's visit of Terry Butcher's side starting a final five-game pre-split sequence in which three fixtures are at Firhill, Archie has no doubt how important it will be to build on the Jags' maiden success in front of the Thistle faithful against Aberdeen a fortnight ago.

The Thistle gaffer said: "After having recorded our first home win of the season we need to build on that.

"Obviously we have three of the final pre-split games at Firhill and although the middle one with Celtic will take care of itself, the other two, with Hibs tomorrow and then in the last of the five at home to Hearts, are fixtures we must look to take full points from.

"But I think the Hibs game is one the boys have been looking forward to for sometime. In the first game here we dominated possession but couldn't find a goal while they did and in the second some poor defending by us at the death cost us two points.

"These are the type of games that rankle with players and hopefully we can exorcise all that frustration tomorrow. But we also need to build some momentum and if we can get the win then it would make the point up at County a very decent one."

Archibald has taken in both of seventh-placed Hibs' games with Motherwell and Inverness in the last week as they have harvested back-to-back draws that have helped open up an eight-point gap between them and Thistle in 10th.

They were performances in which an element of the good, the bad and the downright ugly were present and Archie admits that his side can't afford to be gun-shy if they want to claim their first victory over the capital club this term.

The Jags boss said: "I know that Terry wasn't happy with Hibs' defending against Motherwell but he had them watertight up at Inverness and his back four were very well drilled.

"That is the thing with his sides, in that he tends to try and keep a settled back four but maybe tinkers elsewhere, but Hibs are a side with some good young footballers and Paul Cairney is one of our former players whom everyone at Thistle still rates highly.

"Clearly they paid a lot of money for the boy James Collins and Paul Heffernan is a great natural finisher. So they carry plenty of threat about them."

But the poker-faced Partick boss was keen to concentrate on his expectations for his own side, in a game that could be an agenda-setter for the remainder of the campaign.

Archibald said: "We need to be a lot more fluent in terms of our passing against Hibs than we were up at County. I don't know if, because there was so much riding on that game, nerves got to us a bit and we snatched at a few, but we must be better in that respect.

"But we are playing with belief there are goals in us now and hopefully we can prove that again and build on our win over Aberdeen."

Stuart Bannigan is suspended while Isaac Osbourne, Sean Welsh and Aaron Muirhead are all out injured.