According to those hoary pearls of footballing wisdom that have been around since the first brick was laid on the Kelvin Aqueduct, attack is the best form of defence.

“I think we have to work on our attacking play,” suggested Partick Thistle defender, Adam Barton. The scunnered Jags supporters certainly went on the offensive at the weekend as Ross County’s injury time equaliser was greeted with the kind of throaty, cursing torrents that would have got them ejected from a reunion of boozy squaddies.

Thistle, who sit second bottom of the Ladbrokes Premiership, travel to Dens Park on Wednesday for a crucial contest with a toiling Dundee side who are just a point behind and propping up everybody else.

Having conceded late goals to Hamilton and Hearts recently, it was more of the same on Saturday as Thistle saw a much-needed three points slip from their clutches as their battle to winkle out a first league win since the opening day of the season moves into another week.

The barren run continues to prey on the mind and Barton, the former Preston, Coventry and Portsmouth defender, is keen for his Thistle team-mates to shrug off the psychological burden that is building before it becomes too much of a stifling, mind-mangling hindrance.

“It is beginning to be a psychological thing,” warned Barton. “We are going into games thinking we have to keep cleans sheets and sometimes that’s not good because you are worrying too much about defending.

“I think we have to work on our attacking play. The lads are getting in great positions but we are just not testing their keeper as much as we’d like too. That comes down to working on forward play. There’s only so much defensive play you can work on. We need to get over this thought of defend, defend, defend. It’s hard. If we got the win we’d be a lot more relaxed for Wednesday. Now we’ll just be feeling the same pressure as we did today.”

Along with Liam Lindsay and Danny Devine, Barton was part of a new, three-man formation at the back on Saturday which was working well until Lindsay was stretchered off and taken to hospital following a hefty clattering.

As Thistle were forced into a hasty re-jigging, County eventually took advantage. Chris Burke, a second-half substitute, had a loud claim for a penalty swatted aside as the clock ticked down but he would have a decisive say not long after when he was afforded time and space to get a shot away and level things up in the 95th minute. If that had the locals hissing through clenched teeth, then they were almost grinding those said gnashers into powered stumps moments later when Ryan Dow prodded in a close range effort only for Ryan Scully, the Thistle keeper, to pull off a vital save. The sigh of relief would have rattled the windows on Maryhill Road.

“I suppose we were quite lucky to get the point,” conceded Barton, after the rejuvenated Highlanders had conjured a rousing late thrust. “We can’t put our finger on why the pressure keeps coming. It’s the last 10 minutes of each game. Teams pile pressure on and we need to find a way to calm that down, whether it’s getting the ball down and keeping possession or hitting the channels for someone to run on to and hold the ball up. If we had won we wouldn’t be having this conversation and we’d just move on. It feels like a defeat and when that happens you just start nit-picking and sometimes that not the best thing to do.

“You always want to do better in everything. You look at other teams and say we should do this better or that better. But little things like closing the ball down on the edge of the box, that’s basic. We shouldn’t be thinking ‘we should have closed that down’. We know our jobs. If someone is going to take three of us on and score a goal then you put your hands up and say ‘fair enough’. The goal we conceded shouldn’t have happened. He (Burke) had time on the ball to dribble and shoot. We have to stand up and be counted as men.”