At the turn of the year last season, we'd played 21 games for 24 points in eighth and a four-point safety margin to the bottom two.

By the same stage this season we'll have played 21 games - if we get two wins we'll have the same 24 points but a much bigger margin of safety. Though we'll only be ninth.

Obviously in 2017 we were a complete disaster after the LC final and the margin of safety now is down to Dundee and St Mirren being terrible - so in theory we should have more points this year than last by beating them more than we beat Ross County and Thistle.

But even with those caveats, it still seems clear in recent weeks that we have stabilised to our true level - a stodgy but competitive bottom six side.

And it makes the coming games - though a little less v Killie and a lot less v Celtic - absolutely crucial. Get those six points and January can be looking ahead to next season to hopefully do the fine-tuning which went so badly wrong in summer. Even four (so long as the losses aren't to St Mirren and Hamilton) and we can probably feel we have a bit of breathing space. But a losing run means January is patch up work to survive instead - we have a very fine margin for error.