In times past, a point for Partick Thistle at Tynecastle would have been something to savour, particularly in the circumstances which they dug one out on Saturday.

The fact that the draw they came away with after going down to 10 men was quickly consigned to the past by midfielder Stevie Lawless in the aftermath of a dramatic second half speaks volumes for the progress that the Firhill club have made.

But it also speaks of a desire to remove an unwanted statistic from their record this season. Alan Archibald’s men, despite their successful campaign to date, are the only side in the Premiership yet to take at least a point off of Rangers.

That’s why the scorer of Thistle’s second goal at the weekend was already geeing his teammates up for the forthcoming visit of Pedro Caixinha’s men to Firhill in the dressing room straight after the game in the capital.

And after managing a draw against Celtic away from home recently, a team that Lawless – along with everyone else in Scotland, admittedly - ranks as a far better side, he sees no reason why Thistle can’t tame Rangers when they get their final chance of the season at the weekend.

“I was running my mouth off in there as usual!” Lawless said. “It wasn’t like we all sat down and had a chat about it, I was just saying ‘Listen, any chance of us doing something against Rangers?’

“To be fair, I think I was just talking to myself really because nobody really said anything, I think the boys were still disappointed about us losing the late goal.

“But we’re all now looking forward to the Rangers game. I don’t think we’ve managed to land a punch against them this season, and I actually said that in the dressing room there.

“We seem to do better against Celtic for some reason, but we’re at home and we’ve got the fans behind us, so we’ll try to put in a better performance than we’ve managed to do at Ibrox the last two times.

“I don’t know why we’ve done better against Celtic. As you can tell, Celtic are the better team this year, but for whatever reason we’ve put in better performances against them.

“It’s one of those things that we have to try and rectify next week.

“You would think Rangers would be easier to get at, and looking at the league you would think that it would be harder to get a result against Celtic, but we managed that at a hard venue.

“It’s just one of those things that we need to try and put our finger on, and hopefully we get the three points.”

Thistle thought they had done enough to gain three points against Hearts on Saturday as Kris Doolan headed them in front just after the break, before Danny Devine was sent off in conceding a penalty.

Devine threw himself in front of a Don Cowie shot, with referee Andrew Dallas awarding a spot-kick for handball and a second yellow card along with it. Isma Goncalves produced his one clinical finish of the day to bury the spot-kick.

Lawless then stunned Tynecastle into silence though by immediately moving the visitors back in front with a cute finish from a Chris Erskine pass, before a late Andraz Struna leveller denied Thistle a hard-fought victory.

For Hearts, there remains major concerns at both ends of the pitch. In truth, they created enough chances against Thistle to win two matches, but a combination of the brilliance of Tomas Cerny in the visitors’ goal and the wasteful finishing of Goncalves in particular meant that the boos rained down from the Tynecastle stands on Ian Cathro once more at the end of the match.

Goncalves’s last-gasp miss when he passed tamely into Cerny’s hands when clean through neatly summed up his day, but the striker says he will never hide.

“I missed a lot of chances and I am really disappointed but when you are a striker you have days like this so I must live with it,” said Goncalves. “Their goalkeeper played well but that’s no consolation.

“I have to show in the next games that I am strong mentally. I tried hard to score another goal, to give us a win, I didn’t give up working and looking for another chance until the referee said the game was finished.”