FROM the high of a top six finish last season to the despair of relegation, the fall of Partick Thistle in the past year has been as stark as it has been painful for their supporters.

A season that offered so much hope back in the summer ended with the fading flicker of redemption finally being extinguished on Sunday as Livingston emerged as deserved winners from the play-off final.

And as the Thistle manager Alan Archibald and the players admitted afterwards, they got what they had deserved from the two legs against the Championship runners-up, as they did for their efforts over the course of the season.

The realisation that Thistle will be playing in the second-tier next term will still be raw for anyone connected to the club, and no doubt the bones of an awful campaign will be picked over through the summer.

So, just where did it all go wrong? A clearly crestfallen Archibald offered no excuses after the Livingston defeat, but did point to certain factors that worked against his side over the course of the campaign.

The first thing he could justifiably cite is the various injuries to key players, particularly at the start of the season. Thistle have been notoriously bad starters, and they went into a tough opening sequence of fixtures without the likes of captain Abdul Osman, Mustapha Dumbuya, Callum Booth and Christie Elliott. Stuart Bannigan’s long-awaited return hit the skids, and Gary Fraser was again missing for the vast majority of the season.

The lack of a natural left-wing back in particular had a knock-on effect, as Stevie Lawless was forced to deputise there, depriving the attack of his creative talents. James Penrice, ironically, had gone on loan to Livingston the day before Booth suffered his long-term injury, and it was a surprise not to see more of the youngster when he returned to the club in January.

Nine games came and went without a league win. Terrible form, of course, but Thistle found themselves in a familiar situation compared to years gone by, when fortunes seemed to pick up around the festive season.

It was perhaps no surprise to anyone present though that the match in which they broke their duck – a smash and grab win over Dundee at Firhill in October – proved to be a false dawn. Despite scraping another win over St Johnstone later in the month, the nadir of a 5-1 defeat at Kilmarnock soon after had alarm bells ringing.

Archibald has admitted that even he wasn’t enjoying watching the team he was sending out around this time, with the aim simply to stumble through and remain in touch with those around them until the anticipated return of a raft of players around the turn of the year.

When those players did come back into the fold though, the expected upturn in form and fortunes did not materialise. The tone for the season had been set, and the cause wasn’t aided when players like Elliott, Booth, Osman and Dumbuya had further injury problems down the line.

Injuries alone don’t tell the whole story, and the club’s summer recruitment must also be called into question. Miles Storey arrived for a fee from Aberdeen and failed to set the heather alight. Often played on the left, he looked like a fish out of water, managing just two goals in the entire campaign for Thistle.

Conor Sammon arrived on loan from Hearts, and he too struggled for form for long stretches. He scored just once in his first 18 games, before a purple patch between the turn of the year and February saw him net eight goals in nine appearances. That ratio would fizzle out though, and he found the net just once more before the end of season. Blair Spittal started the season on fire, but he also plateaued.

At the other end of the pitch, the departure of summer recruit Jordan Turnbull was a blow as he signed for Northampton after impressing in his short time here, and the arrival of Baily Cargill from Bournemouth on loan couldn’t settle a shaky Thistle backline. Niall Keown couldn’t find the form of his debut season, while Danny Devine struggled. The lack of a settled defence undoubtedly hurt Thistle as they tried to cope with the loss of Liam Lindsay to Barnsley in the summer.

Other than that, Milan Nitriansky is but a fading memory, Paul McGinn was solid enough on the right, while Martin Woods didn’t pull up too many trees in midfield.

Towards the end of the season, incredibly, it was the attitude of some which came into question, and it was telling to hear Archibald say that relegation had hurt some players more than others. Anyone who saw the likes of Kris Doolan and Chris Erskine immediately after the match on Sunday will know how much relegation had wounded them, but the same can’t be said universally of the squad. It would be tempting to say that some Thistle players should have been struggling to look themselves in the mirror come Monday morning, but judging by their manager’s comments, it seems doubtful those individuals would have lost too much sleep.

These factors all combined into something of an imperfect storm that saw Thistle perform well below the sum of their parts all season, and even relegation when it came may have proved a sweet relief to their long-suffering support in that it drew a miserable season to a close.

A parachute payment of £500,000 on top of prize money of £1.13million for finishing eleventh in the Premiership should see that the ship remains steady enough, but a massive reshuffle of the squad lies ahead with eleven first-team squad members out of contract and another couple who will return to parent clubs after loan deals.

There is now the chance to take a step back and rebuild, but whether Alan Archibald is given a crack at that Championship – or whether he has the appetite for it – remains to be seen.