Alan Archibald has told his Partick Thistle players to snap out of their recent habit of losing late goals, and has stressed to them the importance of going for the win tonight at Dundee.

The Premiership’s bottom two sides will go head to head tonight at Dens Park, and if Thistle lose the game they will slide back to the foot of the standings.

While a draw would see the Jags avoid that fate, manager Archibald says that he will only settle for victory after failing to pick up three points from either of the last two matches against Hamilton and Ross County.

He knows though that Paul Hartley will be preaching a similar sermon to his own players, and with Motherwell and Inverness also facing off this evening, Archibald feels it may be a pivotal night in the bottom half of the table.

“It was the same old story [against Ross County],” he said. “We put in a very good performance but let ourselves down five minutes into injury time and they got an equaliser.

“But we’ve been here before. Losing late goals has become a bad habit for us and it can become a mind-set problem.

“You start to sit a bit deeper but I still believed we’d go on to win. Collectively, we’d defended well and I don’t think you can blame the back three for County’s goal on Saturday.

“But we need to take the positives from that display and, if you keep on being positive, it will turn around.

“We need to keep playing in the same way and, if we go in front, we should still be trying to win the game rather than dropping back to protect that lead.

“It might just take a couple of strong characters to drag everyone else forward.

“We’ve had a few of those games in recent weeks and not taken our chances, but we can open up a wee gap between ourselves and Dundee and something has got to give in the other games as well, so we’re well aware that we could move ourselves up a few places in the league,” he added.

“Of course, Dundee will be thinking exactly the same way. They know they can turn a horrible start to the season around in one game.

“We need to win it, though, and that’s all we’re concentrating on. Everyone is cutting each other’s throats at the moment. We saw on Saturday that there are such fine margins between winning and drawing.

“The difference for us is that, last year, we were winning the games against the teams around us in the table and, this season, we’ve been drawing them.

“It’s a massive difference, too, because – with the league being so tight – those two points are absolutely vital.

“Unless someone goes on a great run and opens up a gap – which Motherwell did last season – it’s already starting to look like the bottom seven clubs at the moment will be there for the duration.”

Archibald’s message appears to be getting through to his players, with Callum Booth recognising the need for Thistle not to dwell on their recent disappointments.

“There’s no time for us to feel sorry for ourselves,” Booth said. “We’ve got a big week ahead so we need to start looking forward.

“It seems like a few Saturdays in a row we’ve been coming in and saying ‘if we won today we would have been up to wherever’, but it’s not happening and we are where we are.

“We’ve got to get over it though, we’ve got a huge week with two big games in four days, so we need to move on.

“The league is that tight at the moment, especially near the bottom, that every point is massive.

“If we get beat it’s not going to be great, but we don’t want to think about that.

“By the same token, if we win we can put ourselves up a couple of places, so it’s a massive game for both teams so early in the season.”

Liam Lindsay is in the squad for tonight’s match after recovering well from a neck injury sustained in Saturday’s match against Ross County, while Chris Erskine should also be back in contention.