ST MIRREN share a similar sense of style with Partick Thistle but the difference between them is black and white.

That distinction would be made clearer after they lined up alongside one another on Saturday, an afternoon during which the teams would be separated by more than just three goals and a few differences of opinion. Thistle would play well enough, moving the ball quickly and into threatening positions but in the end were belted twice by a big fella fae Paisley - Steven Thompson scoring in either half.

It would be lazy to describe the St Mirren striker as a physical threat since his performance at Firhill was also marked by intelligent movement, but it was still his strength that his side would rely on most to pull themselves within two points of Thistle in the SPFL Premiership table. It seems fitting to come to that point directly given that is how St Mirren were able to be effective, with the long balls shelled towards their lone striker the more prominent cause of alarm among the home side's defence.

St Mirren retain a capacity to play neat football, of course - Conor Newton scored his side's second after collecting a shrewd pass from Paul McGowan - but Thistle would be more easily tidied away by passes that were swept forward. It is a method which Danny Lennon had left to gather dust when he took charge of St Mirren in 2010, the manager often making remarks about his team's "brand" and "philosophy" as he instructed his players to play out from the back and weave attractive passing moves. The Paisley side finished last season in 11th place in the league.

It is not a sign that Lennon has grown cynical in his three years in the dugout, though, rather he has acknowledged that a manager's principles must remain flexible. When knocking the ball about fails to make a dent, shelling a couple of balls up to a brawny striker can sometimes prove to be a nice change of pace.

"I can remember very few games where big Thommo has been dominated in the air by another centre-half," said Darren McGregor, the St Mirren defender. "He wins far more than he loses and when you have great runners off him like John McGinn and Conor Newton, you'd be mad not to play the ball up to him. He's an asset we've been using more often in that way and it's been paying dividends.

"I've certainly realised over the past few months that you can't play pure football all the time. There are times when you do and others when you don't. [Saturday] was an example of that, if you like. If you were a neutral it probably wasn't too easy on the eye but we worked hard and stuck it out. We completed the task and came away with a clean sheet and three goals, which is great."

Size will sometimes still matter, then, and that has left Thistle to grapple with a big issue of their own this season. The Firhill side are intent on staying in the top flight but also wish to do it their way, pulling and teasing St Mirren with a series of neat passes and impressive flicks but without opening a gap large enough enough to score through. That has proven to be a common restriction for them as only Hearts have scored fewer goals in the Premiership this term but Thistle are not able to simply follow St Mirren's lead and go long. "The high balls ain't going to benefit no-one in our team," said Isaac Osbourne.

Since the Thistle midfielder is not the tallest, he would prove to be a suitable example of that point but he was still big enough to acknowledge the conflict of interests which have come to occupy his team. Osbourne spoke afterwards of a need to win matches - Thistle have now registered a victory just once in their last nine games - yet that train of thought would be derailed by a strong desire not to surrender to a less impressive style of play.

"I think we tried to do that one or two times [against St Mirren] but that is not our way of playing," said the Englishman. "We like to play the game properly and we are just going through a bad patch in terms of results. If we get one soon then hopefully we can go on a run.

"I think even our fans enjoy our football as well so that's why they are not giving us too hard a time at the moment. But I look at the game against Inverness when we won and didn't play as well as we can. I would say that even if we play rubbish from now until the end of the season, I would prefer to do that if we were picking up points as well.

"You can't enjoy it, and coming back home on the coach from Pittodrie [on Monday night] was pretty depressing. We played all right but we got beat 4-0, and then today we thought we were the better team and ended up losing 3-0. It's disappointing but we've got to stick to our beliefs."