Ross County can leapfrog Hamilton Accies into fifth place in the Premiership with victory at New Douglas Park today and Staggies manager Jim McIntyre has told his players to be ruthless.
County must end a poor recent sequence of results of five losses in their last six league matches.
Despite the slump, the Staggies have held their position in the top six, but McIntyre knows that will not last much longer unless his side can cut out the mistakes in both defence and attack.
He said: “In every game we play at this level, if we switch off we’re punished. That’s the learning curve.
“We’ve got to be at it from minute one and make sure we make good decisions.
“We are making poor decisions at key times in matches and we’re getting punished.
“We’ve got to stand up and be better than that.
“But I’ve not seen a team that has come and thrashed us at any time in the season.
“Even against the best side, Celtic, we’ve had chances to score goals. We’ve just got to keep doing the good things we are doing, but be more ruthless at both ends.
“It’s set up nicely though as if we beat Hamilton we go above them.”
Accies have used their artificial surface to good advantage, losing just seven of their 27 home games since promotion to the Premiership in 2014.
The Lanarkshire outfit and Kilmarnock are currently the only top-flight sides who do not play on grass, but McIntyre believes his squad is well equipped to deal with the change in surface.
McIntyre added: “It’s totally different to Kilmarnock’s pitch. The ball moves far quicker and the bounce is different.
“Depending on whether it’s wet or not, the ball skids off and can actually gather pace. It’s suited to teams who like to get the ball down and play.
“I had the same sort of surface when I was in charge at Queen of the South and we had to make sure we were very accurate with our distribution.
“We’ll play our normal game and we’ve got good footballers in our team who like to play.”