WITH only three games of the Scottish Premiership season to go, things are getting extremely nervy at the bottom of the table.

And this Friday’s game between eleventh-placed Partick Thistle and Ross County, who are sitting in last place, could go a considerable way towards deciding who ultimately makes the drop.

Thistle are currently two points ahead of the Dingwall team and so a win on Friday at Firhill would stretch the lead to five. Ross County won the last meeting between the pair 4-0 but with the Jags having produced a brace of decent results since the split - their last two games have seen them defeat Hamilton and draw with St Johnstone - midfielder Blair Spittal is confident that the last Jags - County match will have little bearing on Friday’s result.

“That game is in the past and so we can’t let that affect us. It was a sore one to take on the night but I’d like to think that we’ve moved on. We’ve given ourselves a good chance with our past two results - last Saturday, we didn’t perform well but it was important that we took something to continue our momentum. So hopefully, on Friday, we can get a positive performance and a positive result.”

Spittal is under no illusions as to the magnitude of the upcoming 90 minutes and while a five point cushion would be significant, he refuses to be drawn into any talk of safety. “It would be huge but we’re not looking too far ahead,” he said.

“We’re just looking at Friday a game on its own - it’s a massive game but we can’t think about safety given the position we’re in.”

The Jags may currently be occupying the play-off position but with tenth-placed Dundee only four points ahead, it is not ridiculous to suggest that Spittal and his teammates could potentially leapfrog them.

Spittal is no stranger to the play-off final having been a part of the Dundee United side that lost to Hamilton in the battle for the final Premiership place last season and so he is desperate to avoid that dog-fight again this season if possible.

“You don’t want to be in the play-offs - I was involved last year and it’s a horrible process so we’ve got to do absolutely everything we can to avoid that too,” he said.

"It’s been a difficult season - as a team, we’ve let ourselves down on a few occasions because looking back, there’s been games were we should have taken more points than we did. But we can’t think about that too much now, we’ve got to just go into Friday and do all we can to get the job done.”