Partick Thistle’s league position may look a lot more pleasing on the eye today but Jags defender Danny Devine insists he’s quite happy to keep winning ugly.

Alan Archibald’s men capped off a profitable seven days at the weekend when they edged out St Johnstone and made it seven points from nine in their last three matches, a haul which lifted them off the bottom of the Ladbrokes Premiership and into 10th spot in a tight division.

Miles Storey, who earned Thistle’s first league victory of the season with his dramatic late show against Dundee last Saturday, was the match winner again at the weekend as his surging run and classy finish saw off the stuttering Saints.

Devine was delighted with the industry and organisation that the Firhill men showed to keep the visitors at bay. It may not have been the most alluring spectacle but the 25-year-old Northern Irishman was more than happy to see his team-mates roll up the sleeves and safeguard a lead they had worked hard to forge.

Devine said: “The run we had been on knocked us a little bit but hopefully that’s behind us now. It’s good to have the other side in that we can win ugly. It wasn’t the best of games and it was scrappy but we got the three points. It’s never nice being bottom of the table and we always stayed positive but it’s good to be off there now.

“We have a long way to go, it’s still early in the season but teams around us have picked up points in their games. It will be tough but we just have to concentrate on what we are doing and not worry about anyone else. We have had a lot of games this season when we have played better and not won. We have shown character, grit and determination to recover from the bad start and we had to stick together. We had to get ourselves out of the mess that we put ourselves in and it’s good it’s turned around.”

Devine added: “This was our second clean sheet in the league, we would like to have had a lot more by this stage but we are delighted to get another one and hopefully we can build on this. It worked out for us against St Johnstone as a back three. Two of us could match them up and have the other as a sweeper and I thought we dealt with their high balls really well. A few games ago we were too open for our liking and we have worked on it at training and the manager tweaked a few things and we have looked more solid especially in the last two games.”

After a largely unfulfilling stint at Aberdeen last season, goal scorer Storey is rejuvenating himself in Maryhill having signed on in the summer.

The former Inverness hitman, 23, opened his account for the Jags against Dundee and his second goal for the club proved the difference against a St Johnstone side which has now gone five games without hitting the net.

Devine added: “Miles had a tough year last season but he has shown what he is all about with his goal, pace and power and long may that continue. Any team that does well always has a goal scorer. We have Miles, Connor (Sammon) and Kris (Doolan) now and I think they blend well together. They all have different attributes but hopefully they can all hit a bit of form to get us up the table. We have maybe relied on Dools and to be fair to him he has come up with the goals, but it is nice to have other options. It maybe takes some pressure off his shoulders and hopefully having these boys up there with him can help him score even more goals for us.”