Scott Paterson wants Partick Thistle to take out their frustration at Saturday’s late postponement of their game at Hearts against Aberdeen on Friday night.

The Jags coach was just around the corner from Tynecastle when they received word that Bobby Madden had deemed the pitch unplayable.

While disappointed, Paterson’s first thought was for the supporters who had already made the journey through to the capital from Glasgow or further afield.

“Once you set off in the coach you expect to be kicking off at 3 o’clock,” he said.

“I think we were all a wee bit shocked and surprised actually, but there’s nothing you can do, that’s the Scottish climate for you.

“You’ve got to feel for the fans, it’s a nightmare for them.

“Leading up to the game the weather was ok, because they said in the morning that the pitch was fine, so they must have had some downpour for it to be lying on the pitch.

“You’ve got to take into consideration where people are travelling from, and perhaps there should be a cut-off point.

“We had the same thing with the Dundee United game and the club lost a lot of money through things like hospitality, so I’m sure they were wanting to play the game as much as we were.

“It’s another game we’ve got to catch up on, it will be another midweek game probably so training will be lighter and become more like recovery sessions, but players would rather play games anyway so it’s not a problem or an excuse.

“Our thoughts though are now firmly fixed upon Aberdeen on Friday night, and the players will be fired up and ready for it.

“Aberdeen have got their tails up and they’re breathing down Celtic’s necks right now, so we’re expecting a really tough game.

“They’re an exceptionally strong team and they’ll have learned from what happened last year. They won’t want to come here and drop points, so we’ll have to be sure we’re at our best because we need the points for our own reasons too.”

A fair bit was made of Thistle’s change of formation to a 3-5-2 for the Dundee United Scottish Cup tie, with the more robust shape expected to have been kept for the visit to Tynecastle.

With the stern test of Derek McInnes’s high-flying side to come, Paterson admits that it may enter the management team’s thoughts again.

Whether it does or doesn’t though, he says that too much emphasis is placed on formations, and that the players themselves must take ultimate responsibility for their performances.

”I think we’ve got the players here that can play in any number of formations, and it gives us options in terms of how we approach games,” he said.

“It depends on what opposition we’re up against and the problems we’re facing. It’s important that we have that flexibility in the squad.

“But at the end of the day, you can talk about formations all you like, it comes down to the players on the pitch.

“I think we’ve got intelligent enough players to mould into any formation. We feel that they’re strong and even although we’ve perhaps got a set way of playing that suits us, we’re not scared to try something different and the players are good enough to cope with that.”