Seven months ago, Aberdeen contemplated a trip to Fir Park with the kind of enthusiasm one might reserve for a visit to the dentist.
At the beginning of the year, Barry Robson ran out of time. Neil Warnock’s experiment had blown up in President Dave Cormack’s face.
After losing his first game as caretaker manager at Dundee, Peter Leven boarded the bus to Motherwell needing a win to prevent the team going eight league games without a win and thus equaling an all-time low set 25 years earlier.
Leighton Clarkson’s goal was enough to earn the second league win of the year. It said everything about the hole the club was in, as the main emotion afterwards was relief that the fear of relegation had been alleviated.
If anyone back then had predicted what would happen later, they would have been tempted to suggest that I needed a day off.
The team that had forgotten what it felt like to win football games has become one that now knows no other outcome.
Jimmy Thelin has opened his career as Aberdeen manager with a remarkable 13 consecutive victories.
Ante Palaversa’s late goal against Hearts kept the Dons top with Celtic
Captain Graeme Shinnie helps Croatian new boy Palaversa celebrate his dramatic intervention
Although Jimmy Thelin’s team has not had to compete with European football at the beginning of the Swede’s reign, 13 consecutive victories is a simply astonishing achievement.
To put this in context, the Dons are the only club in Europe’s top 50 leagues to boast an unblemished run in all competitions. Records are broken so fast it’s hard to keep up.
This would be impressive enough if the former Elfsborg coach had had the financial backing of an oligarch. He hasn’t done it.
Eight of the 14 players who won that day at Motherwell are still at the club. Similarly, only six of the 14 who recorded another dramatic victory against Hearts on Sunday are new to this.
Thelin has spent some money (up to £800,000 in the case of Topi Keskinen) but the seismic shift in Aberdeen’s fortunes is down to his coaching rather than the chequebook.
They have had to do without Bojan Miovski since he was sold to Girona for a record £6.8m and have recently had to make plans without Pape Gueye, still the Premiership’s top scorer, due to injury.
Thelin has not made radical changes, but he has still managed to transform the Pittodrie club.
Now that we are within sight of Aberdeen’s high mark of 15 consecutive victories since the early 1970s, the Swede’s unblemished record also underlines the importance of the leading figure at any club.
Get the right management appointment and everything will change. In Granite City, they are seeing that a rising tide truly lifts all boats.
Thanks to late winner Ante Palaversa, Sunday’s win left the Dons 19 points ahead of Hearts with a game in hand. It is not lost on anyone that the home team finished 20 points behind the team that finished third in the Premiership last season. That race now seems to be over.
The collateral benefit of this tectonic shift is increased revenue. A crowd of 16,064 attended the last meeting between the two sides at Pittodrie in December. On Sunday there were 19,175 people.
Ahead of a tantalizing trip to face Celtic on Saturday week, the whole city has bought into what Thelin is doing.
Given his record on home soil, where he took lowly Elfsborg to within a whisker of the title, there were high hopes for what the 46-year-old could achieve in time at Aberdeen. But this is now off the charts.
The long-suffering fans are beginning to dream of keeping up with their Glasgow rivals.
Aside from Thelin’s men having the momentum of a giant as they return from the international break, the difficulty faced by their Premiership peers is one of perception.
The longer Aberdeen’s renaissance drags on, the harder it becomes to look at the efforts of other senior managers in a favorable light, especially those with much larger budgets.
Although Philippe Clement’s Rangers did the needful by defeating St Johnstone on Sunday, a league table that shows them still five points behind the Dons does not make for good reading.
We are now a year on from the time the Ibrox board called time on Michael Beale following a home defeat to Aberdeen, then managed by Robson.
It cannot be said that the Belgian’s time in charge has been disastrous. Clearly this is not the case. Any rational analysis of his mandate must take into account circumstances beyond his control.
The need to reduce the salary bill and the average age of the team this summer was an inherited issue. The delay in completing construction work at Ibrox is the fault of his superiors.
Clement has had no trouble scouting this year and must be concerned about Aberdeen’s form.
However, it doesn’t seem unreasonable for Rangers fans to believe their team would be in a better place right now.
In golf parlance, Clement has made par for the course. While the credit for winning the League Cup and topping a Europa League group evaporated when the title and Scottish Cup were painfully lost, there have been enough positives along the way to suggest they are on the right path. It is simply not enough to believe that the team will arrive at the desired location soon.
You need time and patience to get there. While the good news is that the board and the majority of fans are still behind him, the reality is that the situation won’t last if Rangers are second in the table for long, let alone third.
Getting prosaic wins like Sunday’s over the Saints is certainly essential as the 50-year-old prepares to mark one year in the job.
While a win rate of approximately 69 percent is favorable, this must be seen in context; Beale enjoyed 72 percent, while Giovanni van Bronckhorst got only 59 percent. Without a doubt, the Dutchman was a better coach.
The team’s form up to this point in the season has been staccato. A draw at Tynecastle on the opening day set the tone.
Last week’s European thrashing by Lyon undermined the fragile confidence of everyone at Ibrox
After the disaster of losing to Dynamo Kyiv at Hampden in the Champions League qualifiers, there was a mini revival and then a drubbing at Celtic Park.
Clement has yet to beat Celtic in five tries, an unwanted mark that even Beale avoided.
Four consecutive victories were achieved, including a famous night in Malmo, without conceding a single goal. They gave rise to the belief that a corner had been turned and Lyon destroyed Clement’s team at Ibrox.
While the manager correctly addressed players such as John Lundstram, Ryan Jack and Borna Barisic, the jury is still out on many of his signings.
Connor Barron has gotten to work. Jefte, Hamza Igamane and Neraysho Kasanwirjo have skill. Vaclav Cerny, Nedim Bajrami and Robin Propper have a lot to prove.
The Rangers will need to see greater contributions from people like Dessers and Tavernier.
Clement must ensure captain James Tavernier puts a difficult start to the campaign behind him. Cyriel Dessers scored seven goals in eight games but has now failed to find the net in four games. With Danilo injured, it is imperative that he finds his way to goal soon.
After bouncing back from the Lyon defeat with a win over the Saints, the break seems like a rude interruption for Clement, but the respite could be useful nonetheless.
Their team will resume at Rugby Park, then face Steaua Bucharest and St Mirren at home, all of which will whet the appetite for a visit to Pittodrie on October 30.
It will hardly be their fault if Aberdeen continue to knock down teams like nine pins before that game. But it will be your problem.
