PARTICK THISTLE are growing depressingly used to playing well enough against Rangers but coming away with nothing.

The should have been on level terms at half-time on Tuesday night, Connor Sammon’s effort somehow stayed out, and were more than the equal to their opponents for 45 minutes before falling out of things.

Thistle could do with getting a bounce of the ball, so to speak.

No other club in the Premiership has suffered so many injuries to key players, and the squad is hardly huge, and while Thistle are not the type to moan, big decisions have gone against them.

At first viewing, Ryan Edwards was offside when he scored at 0-0 on Tuesday night. However, he was level and the linesman has to spot that.

“There was a lot of disappointment,” Partick goalkeeper Tomas Cerny admitted. “I thought it was a very good performance, especially the way we started the game.

“I thought we put Rangers under pressure and created some really good opportunities.

“You could argue also that we were unlucky with the Ryan’s goal, which I’ve seen again and he looked onside. I thought the way Rangers were playing then that if we’d gone ahead they would’ve found it hard to turn the game round.

“It’s disappointing because there were very small margins. If we’d scored first - and we should’ve scored first - then I feel sure we would’ve got something out of the game.”

Alan Archibald certainly felt the linesman would not have put up his flag if he did not have several thousand Rangers fans breathing down his neck from the Jackie Husband stand.

“That’s hard to comment on,” said a sensible Cerny. “But we played here against Celtic a couple of weeks ago, and now against Rangers, and sometimes the decisions coming from that side go more for them than for us.

"If it’s got something to do with that - pressure on the linesman - I don’t know. But, that’s my feeling. It’s how it feels. When it’s a 50-50 decision it feels like it might go against you.

“If you create chances against Rangers and you miss them, then you go into the dressing room at half time one nil down it’s quite difficult to take. You’re thinking we should be ahead.

“But I don’t think things changed much in the second half. I just felt Rangers dealt with our threat a bit better.

“Connor really caused them loads of problems in the first half and I just think Rangers did a bit better in the second half. I didn’t think we changed much in the second half.

“They scored two great goals but offered very little otherwise."

What must be said that for all the decision to disallow Edwards’s goal was wrong, the Rangers players had stopped before the Australian shot. But that didn’t stop it hurting.

“The game changed when they scored, we were on top,” said Edwards. “It just shows how important scoring the first goal in this league is.

“I’ve had the ball in the net, I’ve watched it back and I think I’m onside which makes it really disappointing.

"I’ve managed to finish it and we could have been ahead and that could have changed the entire game. We’ve had a really positive start to the game and we deserved to be ahead but for that decision we would have been.”

Next up is Celtic at Parkhead in the Scottish Cup on Saturday Thistle need all the help they can get.