St Johnstone boss Tommy Wright was frustrated with his team’s defensive performance which he felt cost them dearly in a game between two evenly-matched sides.
Early goals by Kris Doolan and Conrad Balatoni set Thistle on their way, and a great strike by Stuart Bannigan after the break capped off a wonderful afternoon for Alan Archibald’s men.
“There wasn’t really much in the teams,” Wright insisted.
“When you look at the three goals; we don’t deal with a long throw into the box, don’t defend a corner well, we should have had a penalty then they go up the field and get a soft free-kick, and because we’ve made substitutions there’s no one on the edge of the box to stop the shot.
“Alan Mannus has only had one other save. Partick were better, but there wasn’t a lot between the teams.”
Partick Thistle manager Alan Archibald hailed his players and has challenged them to overcome the inconsistency that has plagued their season.
The win moves Archibald’s side 10 points clear of St Mirren at the bottom of the Premiership table, and six clear of Ross County in 10th as they gave themselves some welcome breathing space and halted their alarming slide down the standings.
“I thought it was vital to get a good start,” Archibald said.
“Obviously we’ve had a couple of poor performances here of late so we knew we had to start the game well and try to really get at St Johnstone and get the crowd behind us and it worked.
“We’re just looking after ourselves, I think there will be ups and downs towards the end of the season and we saw it a couple of weeks ago with the bottom half beating the top half and it can happen again, so we’ll just look after ourselves and make sure we’re taking care of our own results.
“The big word has been consistency all season and that’s the problem we’ve got. We go from having 11 outstanding to maybe three outstanding and we can’t have that.
“We need to get the balance of continually having seven guys always giving you maybe eight or nine out of 10 and you can carry the ones who are having a bad game along, but we’ve had ups and downs.
“We need to try and get that balance into our game and on Monday we’ll start working again towards Inverness at home which is a massive game for us as we try to get that back-to-back victory.”