Nothing Lasts Forever
Hibs' unbeaten run came to a crashing halt at AB24 on Saturday as Jimmy Thelin's men breathed life into the race for 3rd spot in the SPFL Premiership
We’ve had the opening act of Jimmy Thelin’s arc as manager of Aberdeen Football Club. A wonderous run of 16 games unbeaten that ushered in the Swede’s reign at Pittodrie had the Scottish footballing landscape shook. Was there finally to be a challenge to the Glasgow duopoly and could it really be coming from this outsider to the Scottish game?
A shattering League Cup semi-final defeat to Celtic was the catalyst for the run that then saw us fail to register a league win from late November all the way through to the middle of February.
It is absolutely fair to say that if it were anyone but Thelin in charge, that run would have seen significant clamour amongst the Red Army for the removal of the man in the dugout.
Thelin deserves huge credit for, on his arrival at the Club, attempting to see what he could do with the squad that he had inherited. It would be foolish to pretend that the majority of Aberdeen fans saw no prospect for short, medium or long-term futures for the likes of Shayden Morris, Vicente Besuijen or Pape Habib Gueye - all players who had either offered limited returns since arriving at Aberdeen or had been frozen (and loaned) out by previous managers. That said, all 3 had at least 2 years left on their contracts upon Jimmy’s arrival and paying them off would have cost the Club a pretty penny.
Instead, we saw revitalised players in the early stages of the season - Morris suddenly full of confidence looked like a completely different beast to what we’d seen before. Vinnie’s smile was back and he contributed early in the season with goals from the bench against St. Mirren and Dundee and, well, Pape Habib Gueye started the season like a man possessed - quickly propelling himself to the top of the scoring charts.
Injuries to Besuijen and Gueye certainly didn’t help Thelin’s squad depth when the going got tough and it soon became clear that, despite the strong start, the squad was not really of a sufficient standard to truly compete at the top end of the table for a sustained period of time.
The January window provided Thelin with the opportunity to shape his squad more in his own image and the Swede deserves huge credit for being able to have got his new signings as integrated into this Aberdeen side as quickly as he has done. Aberdeen are now on a run of 1 defeat in 12 games, hitting form at just the right time as the season hits the most critical of junctures.
The visit of Hibs to Pittodrie on Saturday was the archetypal must win game, the proverbial six-pointer in the battle to see which side will finish behind Celtic & Rangers to claim 3rd spot and, potentially, the guarantee of group stage European football next season.
Win the Dons did, but were there more clues about just where the Club are heading in this performance?
Hibs, rightly, have attracted all the plaudits for their incredible run of form that has seen them jump from the very foot of the table to being, still, the favourties to take 3rd spot. In comparison, Aberdeen’s recent run appears to have slipped somewhat under the radar and you get the impression that Thelin is more than happy with that.
If Aberdeen under Jimmy Thelin are quietly becoming something, this win over Hibs, and the performance was another glimpse of it. This wasn’t, necessarily, a statement win, it wasn’t a bombastic, swaggering performance - but, in a similar way to how the weekend priors Scottish Cup semi-final panned out, this was a measured, patient, and ultimately well-earned result that suggests the team is beginning to trust its shape, the manager’s ideas and their own individual roles.
Kevin Nisbet’s strike might have been the headline moment, but it wasn’t the only thing that mattered on Saturday. What mattered more was that, for the second week in a row, the Dons didn’t panic when chances and goals failed to arrive.
They waited.
They worked.
And when the chance came, they took it.