When you’re embroiled in the grisly battle to avoid relegation, it doesn’t matter how you win a game as long as you manage to win it somehow. At this increasingly desperate time of the season, it’s certainly not a beauty pageant down in the lower reaches of the Ladbrokes Premiership

“We have eight massive games and it is a case of winning at any cost now,” said Partick Thistle’s Christie Elliott. “Whatever it takes to get the three points we have to do it.”

By all accounts, Thistle will need to adopt a jungle warfare mentality and they return to frontline duty today with a testing trip to Easter Road to face a high-flying Hibernian side who have won the previous two meetings between the sides this season.

Having battled to a spirited 0-0 draw with Aberdeen a couple of weeks ago, Thistle’s hopes of making further gains went up in smoke in Auld Reekie when they crumbled to a 3-0 defeat to Hearts on their last trip to Edinburgh just before the international break.

“The Hearts game wasn’t good enough all over the pitch and when you compare that to the 0-0 draw with Aberdeen, it was night and day,” conceded Elliott of that untimely reversal. “In that game against Aberdeen we stuck together but we didn’t do that at Tynecastle. We have to stick together and get back to the levels we know we can reach. There has been games we have been ahead and we have lost late goals to drop points. Consistency is the key in this league, a few wins and we go back up the table, but we are in a drought where we haven’t done so well. It is essential that we pick up as many points as we can, starting on Saturday.”

Despite the giddy highs of last season when they enjoyed a comfortable top-six existence, Thistle are no strangers to life at the wrong end of the table and Elliott knows that kind of backs-to-the-wall experience can still stand them in good stead.

The 26-year-old added: “We have a lot of experienced boys and we have been in this position before. We have a good group of lads in the dressing room and we know what it takes to stay up. It is all down to us now to make sure we do that. We have had a few times that we know we should have done better in games and between the boys we have got together to say what we expect from each other. We want to get to the standards we know we can reach.

“Every game in this league is a tough one. Look at last season? We done well because of that consistency but this year we haven’t had that for one reason or another. We can’t seem to get momentum going from game to game. After the Aberdeen game we should have taken that feel good factor into the Hearts game but the match was over inside the first half an hour. It is essential we have to get a good start against Hibs and we know it will be tough but we are going for the win.

“It isn’t the place we want to be and we know it will go down to the wire. If people are out of contract then they will want to perform to secure their future, but we all want make sure we stay in the league. Last season we didn’t start well but we picked ourselves up. This year we have to pick results up now but we are all on the same page and we know what we have to do. Now it is the case of just producing it.”