Josh Mullin knows Ross County are in a dogfight in the Scottish Premiership’s bottom half.
However, County do not face another top-six side in their remaining eight games and have a six-point cushion on basement side Hearts.
The Staggies performed admirably in their 1-0 home defeat to Rangers yesterday, going down to Ryan Kent’s deflected goal 13 minutes from time.
But prior to the split, County have Hamilton Accies and St Mirren to come to Dingwall, either side of a trip to Tynecastle as the relegation battle intensifies in the season’s closing month.
Mullin said: “Everybody is picking up points and we need to look at ourselves. We need to take the positives from today because there’s no point in moping around. We realise where we are in the league and we need to be positive every game.
“It’s everybody round about us, even before the split. These games are massive but they’re just as big for them as for us. We’ll go into the games positive and see what we can get out of it.
“We need to win these games. We’ve said from the start we want to stay in this league and if we’re going to do that, we need to be winning these games.”
Both Hearts and Hamilton have picked up points in the last week, with the Jambos beating Hibernian in the Edinburgh derby before drawing with Motherwell at the weekend. Accies picked up a surprise 1-0 win over Rangers last midweek and repeated the feat on Saturday with a late winner against Kilmarnock.
One advantage County feel they have over the other sides is the goalscoring potential in their ranks. In Billy Mckay and Ross Stewart, who returned to the starting line-up yesterday, they have two strikers who have broken double figures this season and delivered crucial goals for them this season.
Mullin added: “Billy’s come back into great form and the two of them will score goals.
“We had chances today and we will look at the positives – we can’t be too doom and gloom with the games we’ve got coming up.
“Even Big Lee (Erwin) when he comes on, he’s a handful and there’s other boys that can score from the middle of the park. We’ll look to be as confident as possible and see where it takes us.”
The former Livingston winger felt County were hard done by with the final outcome yesterday, with the Staggies having chances of their own to take all three points. Mullin said: “We were definitely in the game. He’s (Kent) come inside and took a shot that’s been deflected – these things happen but it’s harder when you’re where we are in the table.”