Jimmy Thelin will be of interest to our game's top man and I have name for movie about Aberdeen boss – Hugh Keevins

Jimmy Thelin
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


There will be Aberdeen fans at Celtic Park next Saturday who were also inside the ground on that fateful day.

November 6, 2010. Full-time result: Celtic 9 Aberdeen 0. The Dons supporters have waited 14 years to erase the memory of the time manager Mark McGhee suffered that ignominious defeat. There was a single-goal win for Dons on the final day of the season six years ago – but I’m talking about a scale of defeat that registers on the Richter Scale as much as that humbling did on the day Celtic ran riot.

And now Aberdeen believe they have a man in charge of the club who can genuinely contemplate a win over the defending champions that would be as symbolic as it would be satisfying if it meant the ascent of the league table with no one for company. This is the fixture that kicks off what might be called Jimmy Thelin and the Sequence of Substance.

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Aberdeen boss Jimmy Thelin
Aberdeen boss Jimmy Thelin

It sounds like a movie title and there is the potential for an epic turn of events. Celtic away, a revival of what used to be known as the New Firm derby against Dundee United at home, followed by Rangers at Pittodrie and capped by a Premier Sports Cup semi-final with Brendan Rodgers’ side at Hampden on November 2.

Four games. Two weeks. One block booking to determine whether or not Thelin is the real deal, or establish that his team’s scintillating start to the season has been a flash in the pan. Aberdeen need to be put into context. Jimmy hadn’t started school in Sweden the last time the club won the league title, a 40-year long omission from their record books. It has been years since the Dons last won the Scottish Cup in a penalty shoot-out against Celtic.

Charlie Nicholas scored one of the spot-kicks against his old club and he, to illustrate the passage of time, is now a grandfather. A decade has also passed since Derek McInnes brought the club the League Cup on the back of an undistinguished final against
Inverness Caley Thistle.

You could hardly, under those circumstances, describe the Pittodrie club as serial trophy winners on a domestic basis. But Thelin has overseen a medical breakthrough in the north east. Pittodrie has a pulse once again. "They used to be famous” is a saying that might have to be reviewed under the terms of the revival that Jimmy has masterminded.

It’s not often you get a game which puts first against second in the league table and Rangers are neither of those clubs. That’s a tribute to Thelin. The international break is an annoying interruption for supporters disillusioned by the performances, and the results, racked up by Steve Clarke’s side.

And that is undoubtedly the case this time when it’s the most eagerly anticipated league game of the season that is being delayed. It’s remarkable to think how far Thelin has taken Aberdeen from a sorrowful sequence of another kind. The one that began with the worst result in the club’s history, the 1-0 Scottish Cup elimination suffered at the hands of Darvel from the sixth tier of Scottish football that came in January last year.

The hesitation over what to do for the best after that night in Ayrshire allowed the club to let Jim Goodwin remain in charge as manager for the next game. And saw him leave Easter Road by a side door following a 6-0 demolition by Hibs. Barry Robson came and went after going from interim to permanent boss. Neil Warnock had a comical cameo role that lasted 34 days and contained no league wins.

The lack of direction at Pittodrie was painfully obvious. Until the man from Elfsborg arrived on these shores. Now we have a game that has captured the public’s imagination. How often does that happen in the Premiership outwith the Old Firm derbies? Even Celtic’s manager must be intrigued by it all after two spells in charge of the club spent hoovering up league titles and creating records in an environment where he only had to concern himself with the team across the road on the other side of the city.

Now there’s a new kid in town who’s trying to be as synonymous with Sweden as ABBA, Ikea and Henrik Larsson. That’s the name of the game on Saturday afternoon.

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