Ross County manager Jim McIntyre is not fooled by Partick Thistle’s recent slump in form and knows his Staggies face a tough Scottish Premiership encounter in Glasgow today.
Thistle have lost their last four games and have won just one of their last 10 matches in all competitions ahead of today’s game at Firhill.
By contrast, bottom-placed County reignited their push for Premiership survival with a much-needed 3-2 victory against Motherwell last week, moving them within three points of Well and St Mirren.
McIntyre knows his players must show consistency in their remaining 13 games to stay in the top-flight, with the Jags – managed by his former Dundee United team-mate Alan Archibald – standing in the way of the Staggies’ first back-to-back wins of the campaign.
McIntyre said: “We had them watched in their 1-0 defeat by Dundee last week and we know they did very well. They were one pass away from scoring a last-minute goal – that’s fine lines in football. Their first-half performance was excellent.
“They certainly aren’t playing without confidence. I could see they did a lot of things well in the game and were unfortunate not to get the result.
“I’ll not pay any attention to their stats. We know they’ve got players who, on their day, are more than capable as they’ve already proved this season.
“You just need to look at some of their results this season and how well they’ve done since they’ve come into the league. Alan’s done a great job there.
“We’ve just got to look to build on the levels of performance that each player brought to the Motherwell game.”
After a tough run of January fixtures when County consecutively faced the league’s top three, five of their remaining eight fixtures before the split are against bottom-six sides.
However, McIntyre is not looking any further than today’s game against the Jags. He said: “If we can replicate the type of performance we had against Motherwell we’ll climb the league.
“That’s our goal. We need to keep our feet on the ground – it’s one good performance and we’ve not shown consistency this season.
“We’ve now got to do that. The focus for the team is to win the next game in front of us.”