It has been a dream season for Adam Barton, with his eye-catching displays in midfield and on occasion, at the back, bringing a touch of class to Partick Thistle and helping them to a top-six finish for the first time since the early eighties. And he will round off a fantastic year in style by getting married at the end of the season.

The problem, of course, is just how Barton or his team can top what they have managed to achieve and experience since last August, but the 26-year-old is not a man to rest on his laurels.

And he sees no reason why Thistle can’t push on after the summer and finish even higher up the table next year.

“I’m getting married to my fiancée Amelia on June 3rd, then I’m away on my honeymoon and back for another wedding straight after, then back here,” Barton said.

“We’re going to the Seychelles for honeymoon, and from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard it’s very nice. Hopefully it’s a bit different to Maryhill!

“It’s been a great season and to finish it off by getting married, what a year. I don’t know how next season will top it, but you can’t think like that.

“You’ve got to keep pushing on and doing more, and we definitely have a squad of players who want to keep doing well, and a manager who wants to keep pushing us further than he already has.

“It will be a good place to come back to. You never know, it might be top four next year. Why not? We play teams like Rangers and we should have won twice here.

“Once we tweak those little things out of our game, then anything can happen, it really can.

“I’m surprised by how close Thistle are to the likes of Rangers. Coming up here, you’re told that these teams are on another level from us, but I don’t see that.

“Obviously they are good team, but I don’t see them as being so far ahead that we can’t give them a game. We’ve shown that we can, so why settle for sixth?

“St Johnstone are a great example. They don’t have the best of squads, I’m not afraid to say that.

“But what they do is that they work very well as a team, and that’s what has got them success.”

Barton concedes that he and his teammates were given the runaround by Celtic on Thursday night, but while he says the champions are a class above anything else he has faced since arriving in Scotland, he doesn’t believe that the gap between Thistle and Aberdeen, their opponents today, is quite so far to bridge.

“I put Celtic aside and accept that they are on a different level, but the rest I think we are very much capable of giving them a game,” he said.

“There’s no need for an inferiority complex. Aberdeen is a game where we have to go in and think we can get something.

“If we go in thinking it’s going to be tough and feel negatively about it, then we will probably get a negative outcome.

“But we can definitely get something from the game, and if we work hard as a team which is what we do best, then there’s no question that we can get a result.”