Queen of the South face six cup finals at they bid for a play-off push.
Boss Allan Johnston has thrown down the gauntlet to the players after his side suffered another setback with a 2-1 defeat away to Morton.
He said: “We were really poor right from the start and throughout the whole match which is surprising after the way we have been playing.
“It was a great opportunity to climb the table and put teams above us under pressure, so it’s really disappointing as we both individually and collectively, were miles off it.”
He added: “We have six massive games to go and every one of them is as equally as important. We have to approach them as though they are six cup finals.
“We need to get as many points as possible because we want to be challenging for the top four if we can.
“We have got to focus on ourselves, we have to get back to winning ways and put in performances to get results again.”
The Cappielow defeat was a lacklustre showing by the Doonhamers, a performance that the manager found hard to believe after their recent run.
He said: “We didn’t do the basics right and we didn’t work as hard as we have been. We didn’t pass the ball as well and it wasn’t anywhere good enough, I don’t know how many times we passed the ball out the park under no pressure. You can blame the pitch but we just didn’t get the simple passing right and that has got to be better. They need to take more care and they have got to work harder as well.
“It seemed to be that they picked up every second ball and it’s only us that can change that.”
Disappointed by his own side’s efforts, the Palmerston chief, who was serving a one match ban, didn’t think much of the game overall.
AJ said: “It was two poor teams and a really poor game to watch. They were slightly better and managed it better than us. We never caused them problems at all going forward which isn’t like us with the quality and pace we’ve got. We knew going into the game, they are slow at the back and we should have been able to expose that but we never seemed to be able to do that and that stems from not passing the ball well.
“We have to take it one game at a time. I’ve said that from the start. The last two games have been really disappointing because we have been in a good position to go on and push up the league. Every game is massive but now more than ever.”
