The way that Chris Erskine thumped a volley into the top corner of the Aberdeen net at Pittodrie on Saturday suggested that he wasn’t best pleased about starting the game on the bench.

He said afterwards though that the venom in the strike came solely from a determination to have a telling influence on the match, and drag Partick Thistle back into it in the process.

A Niall McGinn free-kick following a lunge on Graeme Shinnie by Abdul Osman and a gift that was presented to Miles Storey by a Liam Lindsay lapse gave the hosts a cushion over Thistle.

Despite his frustration at kicking his heels on the side-lines as his side fell two goals behind, somewhat harshly it has to be said, Erskine says he understands manager Alan Archibald’s reasoning.

And there was no consolation for him in his wonderful late strike that almost sparked an unlikely comeback, with the attacker just deflated that his side left the North-East with nothing to show for their efforts.

“It was a good goal but it doesn’t mean anything in the end,” Erskine said.

“When you score a good goal and you don’t get anything out of the game that’s the worst thing that can happen.

“Of course it was disappointing not to start, you want to play every game, but that’s the position we’re in this year with the squad we’ve got.

“We’ve got enough good players to rotate it and the manager thought that the team he put on the pitch today was the one to win the game and that’s fair enough.

“You’ve got to trust your manager and trust what he’s doing, and we all do that, and if it means you don’t play a game here and there then that’s the way things go.

“We all trust the manager and trust the team he puts on the park.

“I don’t think I was dropped as such, so I didn’t feel as if I was going on the park to prove a point, but when you’re going on as a sub you always want to make an impact no matter what stage of the game it is.

“You always want to try to score a goal or change the game if it’s not going for you, but unfortunately it never materialised.

“As soon as you know that you’re not playing you want to get behind the rest of the team, and then you’re thinking about what you can do when you come on.

“It was in my head that I would come on and score the winner, that’s what I was hoping to do, but obviously that never happened.”

Sean Welsh apologised to his teammates for his late sending off just before Erskine threw Thistle a lifeline.

Before that though the midfielder had contributed to a very decent team performance from the visitors, who were good in possession and created numerous decent chances.

Their inability to convert the majority of those was the only gripe that Erskine had with their day’s work.

“I actually thought we were the better team for a lot of the game,” he said.

“We passed the ball well and had a lot of chances in the game, I think that’s what the manager is most disappointed about.

“To come here and create a lot of chances and not take them is the most disappointing thing, but we played well and maybe those chances will go in on another day.

“We can definitely take positives from it.

“Aberdeen hadn’t got off to a good start and had drawn their first two games, so I think they were desperate for the win today as well.

“With the way they finished last year and with the players they’ve got it was always going to be hard coming up here, but we can take heart from today although obviously we wanted more.”