LIAM Lindsay is out to break Hearts on what appears to be a grandstand finish to the season for Partick Thistle.

The Maryhill club could secure their highest placing since returning to the top flight this afternoon as Motherwell come to visit, but that’s just the start of the Thistle adventure according to Lindsay.

With Alan Archibald’s team just three points behind fifth-placed Hearts, they could draw level with the Edinburgh outfit and potentially go within five points of St Johnstone with six games left to play.

And while Lindsay insists he and his team-mates are focused on the task in hand of getting that top-six spot nailed down, the 21-year-old defender is ambitious about what can then be achieved on top of that.

“Exactly,” he said. “What is the points difference, three points? I don’t really know what has happened to Hearts but we are looking up.

“That gives us confidence that we can not just get the top six but push on after the split and maybe go up a place or two, and not just be content with sixth.

“We are nearly there. It’s just one last push now.

“I think we have had a good mix of clean sheets and scoring goals over the last couple of months. We have been defending better, I’d say. At the start of the season we were just conceding goals too much. It was a fairly new and young back four. It was just a matter of trying to gel.

“Scotty [assistant Scott Paterson] and the gaffer have been drilling us with defending and attacking. That then means you get clean sheets and wins which brings confidence and allows you to push on.”

Firhill has not been a happy hunting ground for a Motherwell side who could well do with breaking that curse this afternoon. Of their last eight trips to Maryhill, the team from Lanarkshire have won just once back in December 2013. They’ve also lost six. Two stalemates in the space of two games have brought with them a conflicting set of emotions for Stephen Robinson and his players. While a point at Ibrox and a clean sheet in a Lanarkshire derby are not to be sniffed at, there is a frustration that team currently sitting perilously in 10th place should well have been breathing that bit easier going to Firhill this afternoon.

“There is definite frustration, that’s the best word. We’ve played well, controlled large parts of the game against Rangers and probably about 90 per cent against Hamilton,” he said. “We lacked that bit of quality in the final third against Hamilton. We recognise that. We went a bit too long and we got sucked into that kind of approach. That can happen when you want to win a game so desperately.

“So we’ve come out of two games with two points and a little bit disappointed that’s all that we’ve got.

“But we’re building and we’re going in the right direction. The other night was our first clean sheet in 16 games. We look organised and at the same time we’ve still been able to leave people up the pitch to allow us to break and create chances.”

It’s just a matter of taking those chances, as Ryan Bowman well knows. The Motherwell striker missed his team’s best opportunity against Hamilton midweek after an impressive display just four days before at Ibrox in exceptional circumstances. The Englishman became a dad for the second time just the day prior to facing Rangers at Ibrox, and said: “I’ve just had a boy [Oliver] who is only a week old and on the football side of it I’m getting minutes in. It’s all good.

“If we are picking up points away to Rangers we can do it against anyone. Wednesday night was frustrating for myself. I should have scored, we had three or four good chances and they had one shot on target all game. That’s frustrating.”