Partick Thistle’s success last season was built upon a solid defensive foundation, so the recent slackness that has cost them points - particularly late in games - is causing concern around Firhill.

Central defender Liam Lindsay is refusing to use the change in personnel in the back four as an excuse for their recent lapses though, saying it is up to the whole team to cut out their costly errors.

The 21-year-old feels that his partnership with new arrival Danny Devine will blossom given time, and that Thistle will soon be back to their miserly best.

“You could use that as an excuse, but we’re professionals and we should be doing our job,” Lindsay said. “We aren’t looking to make excuses, we should be keeping clean sheets.

“Everyone knows their job, we just need to execute it on a Saturday which hasn’t been happening. I’m sure that will happen soon though.

“My partnership with Danny is good and it’s improving every day. I like Danny personally and we’ve got a bond, as soon as he came in we were pals in the dressing room and he’s good to play with.

“We know that we have to sort things out at the back though and cut out the mistakes.

“It’s always hard to get a partnership going, sometimes it takes longer than other times, but I’m 100% positive that we’ll get there.

“I’ve got every faith that we’ll improve, cut out the silly goals and start climbing the league.

“It’s just gutting after each of those games where we’ve lost stupid goals, and we need to rectify that. We’ve had lapses of concentration, but we need to defend as a team also.

“We need to show a mental toughness, show confidence and not be afraid to squeeze up and make it hard for teams to break us down, which we aren’t doing at the moment.”

Ross County, who visit Firhill on Saturday, are hardly in a sparkling run of form themselves. They have failed to find the net in their last four games with top scorer Liam Boyce sidelined with a knee injury.

Lindsay says it is vital that Thistle don’t present any simple opportunities to Jim McIntyre’s side to break their duck this weekend.

“100% we want to keep that drought going for them, and it’s up to us as a team and as a back four to make sure we don’t give them anything easy to break that run for them,” he said.

“These are the teams round about us and we’re looking to take as many points as we can from them.

“That isn’t happening at the minute, but we’ve got Ross County to rectify it, and hopefully we can get the three points.

“We’ve got to aim for full points from the next two. As soon as we get a win, then I’m sure we will go on a run like last year.

“Every game is a must-win in this league, you don’t get any easy games but we need to get as many wins as we can as soon as we can, otherwise we will be scrapping come the end of the season and no one wants that.”

One area where Lindsay is having no problems at the moment is finding the opposition net, with his goal against Hamilton last weekend taking him onto four for the season in all competitions.

“I don’t know what’s happened!” he laughed. “It’s always good to chip in though, and I know that I’m a threat from corners. I’m hoping I can use that and score as many as I can.”