Seven days, a brace of goals and two-match-winning performances? This particular Storey is making pleasant reading for those of a Partick Thistle persuasion. Miles Storey’s second decisive goal in a week proved to be the difference here at Firhill as his first half finish, a genuine chink of quality amid the honest endeavour, continued Thistle’s resurgence and hoisted them off the bottom.

St Johnstone, meanwhile, simply lacked the invention to break down a well-organised and determined home defence. It’s now just one win in nine for the stuttering Saints and having failed to score in their last five games, this worrying drought will probably have the Perth City Council pondering a hosepipe ban.

“The stuffiness to get another clean sheet pleased me most,” said Alan Archibald, the Partick Thistle manager, as his team made it seven points from nine in a week while shutting their opponents out for the second consecutive game. “Our game management was pleasing too. You could see at times we still looked a bit fragile so I was delighted with the way we saw the game out.”

It had taken Thistle until last Tuesday night to register a first clean sheet of the season. Was there hope, then, for a St Johnstone side desperately looking for the rarity of a goal? Well, the visitors certainly set about ending their drought with purpose and, within moments of the kick-off, David Wotherspoon got in behind the home rearguard only to have his effort blocked by Tomas Cerny.

It had been a lively enough start by the visitors but it was Thistle who delivered the first telling blow as the sprinting Storey got scampering down the flank and left all and sundry wheezing in his wake as he surged into the box and cushioned a tidy, angled finish into the net.

“It was a great bit of composure to finish it off,” added Archibald of his new recruit.

If that was a sore one for Tommy Wright’s team then it got worse as a couple of Saints went marching out. Or, more accurately, hirpling off. Stefan Scougall was the first to depart with an injury before Brian Easton hobbled down the tunnel not long after as Wright was forced into a hasty re-jigging of personnel. Amid the choppings and changings, Blair Spittal came close to delivering another painful thud to St Johnstone morale when his powerful drive from the edge of the area zipped narrowly wide.

After their initial menace, St Johnstone had struggled to pose much of a threat as the first half began to drift to an uneventful finale. A quick breakaway as the whistle loomed looked promising but Michael O’Halloran’s timorous effort to finish off the counter thrust summed up the lack of a cutting edge.

The visitors began the second period on the front foot as their hosts retreated ever deeper but, again, St Johnstone’s decision-making, decisiveness and paucity of guile when in good positions hindered their progress. Liam Craig opted to head the ball down to a team-mate instead of going for goal from six yards while Aaron Comrie, sent into the box by a delightful dinked pass from Wotherspoon, could only put the ball into Cerny’s clutches with a trio of attackers waiting to pounce.

The Saints continued to huff and puff but it was Thistle who had the best chance to put the game to bed when Spittal raced into box but had his goal bound strike brilliantly palmed round the post by the strong hand of Alexander Clark.

St Johnstone certainly had plenty of the ball as the clocked ticked down but it was going to take more than a series of fairly uninspired lumps into the box to breach a robustly marshalled Thistle defence.

“We’ve had these runs before,” added Wright. “In my first year we went nine without a win. It happens in this league. It’s a different type of annoyance today because we’ve played really well and got ourselves into good positions. But we were let down by our decision-making or the wrong ball and nobody really showing belief in the last third.”