IN any kind of pressurised situation, it is important not to let your emotions get the better of you.

It is certainly something that has been drilled into the minds of the Ross County players in the wake of their first back-to-back wins of the season and a weekend that ended with them not just off the bottom of the SPFL Premiership, but out of the relegation places altogether on goal difference.

As poor as Partick Thistle were from a defensive perspective, it is important to applaud the solidity, industry and telling invention of Jim McIntyre's men. They appear to be a team on the move with their goals at Firhill coming from three players - Craig Curran, Raffaele de Vito and Marcus Fraser - brought in during the course of the January transfer window.

It is only natural that they should be elated, but they certainly do a good job of hiding it in public. They bounced clichés around as you would a ball in a game of head tennis after the final whistle here.

"Taking it a game at a time", "we have to focus on ourselves", "we won't get carried away". All the old favourites were there. As mindnumbing as it may be to listen to, it is perfectly understandable.

They do, to pinch a favoured phrase from the Boys' Own Book Of Banalities, have to keep their feet on the ground. There is much work to do before the spectre of relegation is banished.

That black prospect is not quite at Partick's door yet, with a seven-point gap still existing between themselves and the three teams tied on 18 points in the drop zone, but you wouldn't know it from talking to their manager, Alan Archibald.

He cut a stern figure in the wake of his side's fifth consecutive defeat. His tone was controlled, calm and understated even if the words were not. It was the lack of evident emotion, both in the dressing room and in dealing with the media afterwards, that left his players most disturbed.

In the wake of a match in which they lost an early goal through some sheer bad luck, Thistle fell apart. If they do find themselves hauled into a dogfight, the events of Saturday afternoon do not augur well.

Their captain, Danny Seaborne, concedes the players were disturbed by Archibald's demeanour as the dust settled on the defeat. Yet, it is that kind of cold-headed, analytical appraisal of their situation that will be required by everyone within the footballing staff to make sure things do not go from bad to worse.

"We wanted him to scream and shout, but he was just really disappointed," said Seabourne. "Disappointed is worse than being angry.

"We just didn't turn up and it is a concern that we were not up for the battle. To a man, we were all over the shop."

Archibald accused his players of showing a lack of hunger, conceded that his defence was "all over the place" and warned that "everyone is looking for another Hibs this year."

By that, he is referring to the astonishing collapse over the second half of last season that resulted in Hibernian plummeting to one off the bottom in the table and then squandering a 2-0 lead from the first leg of the relegation play-off against Hamilton Academical.

Seaborne sees the absence of any great target to aim for as a potential problem and has warned that a continued lack of focus, particularly with a visit to Ross County less than a couple of weeks away, cannot be permitted.

"We are not within touching distance of anything," he said. "We are in a grey area and that makes it difficult.

"All the lads that were here last season saw a big club like Hibs going down when it wasn't expected.

"We are now looking over our shoulder.

"We need to get fixed up quickly or we will really be dragged into it."

Seaborne found himself in the eye of the storm at centre-back and deserves credit for making no attempt to excuse what transpired. His day started badly on 11 minutes when an attempted clearance from Frederic Frans whacked off his body, spun back towards the Thistle goal and provided Craig Curran with a simple opportunity to open the scoring.

Archibald felt there had been a handball prior to the goal. Curran scoffed at those allegations after the final whistle.

Paul Quinn missed a great chance to make it 2-0 when lashing a shot wide of the target from 12 yards and, after the home side's Ryan Stevenson had hit the post with a header near the end of the opening period, Curran put a weak penalty straight at Paul Gallacher on 54 minutes after Seaborne had upended Liam Boyce.

It was to matter little. Raffaele de Vita scored his second goal in two games with a beautiful finish after some excellent lead-up work from Michael Gardyne.

Lyle Taylor gave Partick some reason for hope when heading home from a Kallum Higginbotham corner on 68 minutes, but Marcus Fraser completed a rampaging run up the right by linking up with Boyce and drilling an angled shot low past Gallacher to complete the scoring three minutes later.

"You have to be aggressive in this situation," said Fraser. "You have to impose yourself and we have done that well in the past two weeks.