Dundee striker Simon Murray knows full well that they can’t afford to throw away any more games like the one at Rugby Park.
The Dark Blues found themselves in the box seat in Ayrshire on Tuesday night, holding a 2-1 lead over Kilmarnock and with their opponents seemingly losing their discipline after going down to 10 men.
However, they somehow conspired to concede two goals and crashed to a shattering 3-2 defeat.
On-loan Hibs man Murray, who experienced the pain of relegation with city rivals Dundee United two years ago, realises how precious points are as clubs approach the business end of the season.
The Dens men currently sit in ninth spot in the Premiership, just two points clear of Hamilton Accies in the play-off spot and five ahead of bottom club Ross County.
They travel to Firhill on Saturday to face 10th-placed Partick Thistle in what is now a serious six-pointer.
After that fixture there will be only six games to go before the split and those are against Motherwell (h), Celtic (a), St Johnstone (h), Aberdeen (a), Hearts (h) and Rangers (a).
There is precious little room for error for the Dark Blues and what Murray hopes is that the lessons of the Killie loss are learned pretty sharpish.
He said: “At the stage we were at, we shouldn’t have lost that game – it’s as simple as that.
“When you are 2-1 up against 10 men you don’t think you are going to lose the game.
“I don’t know – it’s just hard to take.
“Maybe we didn’t put our foot on the pedal enough to try to get the third goal.
“I missed a chance where I should have done better and it’s disappointing.
“I probably should have gone in a wee bit further but I thought I had a chance – it was not to be.
“We now need to focus and plan ahead for Saturday.
“The manager was obviously not happy, just like the players.
“We have to learn from that quickly and hopefully get a positive result on Saturday.
“We have to start picking up points and be solid both at home and away.
“It’s not as if we are not creating chances or scoring goals.
“We did get two against Killie but conceded three so there are things to work on and hopefully we can do that and get victories.
“You can’t be too down.
“Obviously, we are devastated because we were leading 2-1 against 10 men.
“We are doing enough to win games but errors are letting us down at the moment.
“We need to get those mistakes out of the system.”
