Partick Thistle must get over their disappointment of missing out on the top six and ensure they finish the season with a flourish, according to manager Alan Archibald.

The Thistle players, staff and fans were gutted as their side narrowly missed out on their goal of a top-half finish with defeat at Ross County.

Archibald says though that the club must shake off their disappointment and aim for their best finish in the league since they were promoted back to the highest level.

“It’s vitally important not to let the season peter out,” he said.

“We want to finish seventh first and foremost, but if we have a couple of bad results then you start to look over your shoulder again.

“We need to try and progress from last year and finish seventh, that’s our main aim for the final games.

“We want to secure that as early as we can, and then we can start to think about next season.”

Archibald is determined not to face the same problems he had this time last year when he was tasked with rebuilding large sections of his team during the summer.

With various first-team players out of contract though, he says that he is keen to get answers from some of his regulars as soon as possible.

“We have a couple of boys signed up again, it’s an ongoing process and we’re still talking to others,” he said.

“We’ve got one eye on next year, but we need to make sure we finish this season well.

“We’ve got the likes of Tomas Cerny, Liam Lindsay, Callum Booth and Ryan Edwards tied up, and when we know what sort of budget we have for next season then that will affect what we do next.

“We’ll need to see where we are, what players we can keep and which of our targets we can get in.

“We had a frustrating summer last year because we lost some key players and it took us a bit of time to replace them and then to bed those new signings in.

“We are in a better place this year, there’s a shape to the team there that we know we’ve got and we’ve not got as much to do.

“I think that cost us at the start of last season, all of the players went out of contract at the one time and that was difficult to deal with.

“We know we will lose players to other clubs, that’s just a fact of life, but we’re certainly in a better position than this time last year.”

One area that the Thistle boss is keen to improve upon is his side’s goals for column, with an excellent defensive record being offset by the Jags struggling to breach opposition defences with anywhere near as much regularity as they would like.

“I think we all want more goals,” he said.

“We’ve got the worst record in the league at the moment and we all know we have to improve on that.

“We can’t just rely on the back lads all the time. We’re happy with how we’re playing though, we had to change from earlier in the season.

“If you remember, we were playing quite open football and hitting the bar, hitting the post, so we had to change it a bit and start to grind some results out.

“As a manager, you obviously like that side of it when you get a 1-0, but we know we need to improve our goalscoring record.

“It’s about trying to marry the two. I’m proud of the defensive record we have, we just need to get a good balance there where we’re creating enough chances for our forwards.”