Whatever happens with the rest of Aberdeen’s season, you can’t say that Jimmy Thelin wasn't backed by the club’s board in the summer transfer window.
The Pittodrie boss has already been feeling a little bit of heat in the early stages of the 2025/26 campaign. At present, the Dons sit bottom of the Scottish Premiership having failed to score a goal in their first three games, all defeats – including giving Falkirk their first top-flight victory after returning from a 15-year absence – while they failed to make the most of a winnable tie against FCSB in the Europa League play-off.
In a vacuum, that sequence of results (along with a comfortable League Cup victory at Greenock Morton) wouldn't be enough to question a manager’s viability for the role so early into the new term, especially as there are few caveats to attach to those disappointments.
Aberdeen started the league campaign going away to Hearts and then hosting Celtic. At present that is quite literally the toughest opening pair of fixtures they could have received, with the aforementioned pair sitting first and second in the table on 10 points each from four games. Furthermore, Thelin and his men have been hampered by a couple of questionable red cards.
While the majority seem to agree with VAR’s decision to intervene and Nicky Devlin yellow card tackle against Falkirk into a red (though this writer is far from convinced), there is no question that the second yellow and penalty given against Alexander Jensen in the FCSB away leg, with the tie still knotted at 2-2 on aggregate, was an absolute disgrace.
The pressure, however, comes from last season’s hangover. Though Thelin managed to bag a ‘credit in the bank’ windfall by bringing the Scottish Cup back to Scotland’s North East for the first time in 35 years, his team’s league form over a sustained period is alarming to say the least.
Since their unbeaten start to the 2024/25 Premiership campaign came to an end with a 2-1 defeat at St Mirren, they’ve played 30 league games and picked up just 22 points. There’s no two ways about it, that’s relegation form. But having decided to roll the dice with the Swede again this season, they've done the right thing in going all out to strengthen the squad over the summer.
They’d already secured ten signings (with nine new additions) before making a couple of big splashes on the final day of the transfer window: re-signing Kevin Nisbet on a permanent deal (for a bargain £300k, reportedly) and adding Bologna winger, and Sweden international, Jesper Karlsson in a move that can only be described as ‘eye-catching’.
Then, out of nowhere, like a wrestling legend suddenly returning to the WWE after years away jobbing around Hollywood, they announced a surprise deal which brought Stuart Armstrong back to Scottish football.
Fans, sullen and disenfranchised just a few days ago, are now understandably giddy at the prospect of seeing what this team can do.
As Brian Clough once said, the secret to being a good manager is picking good players and now Thelin has a squad full of them. He also, mercifully, no longer has to rely on Kusini Yengi to lead the attack. It’s fair to say that with a competent striker for their first three league games Aberdeen would have got themselves at least a couple of points. (This is a little unfair on Yengi who, having not scored in club football for over a year prior to his arrival at Aberdeen, is clearly going through a crisis of confidence, but you cannot deny he has been well below standard thus far.) But there is one trend throughout his Aberdeen tenure that Thelin has to reverse if the rest of this season is going to be as bright as it should.
When the manager first arrived in Scotland he instantly made a few players better. Nicky Devlin went from average in his first season to a Scottish international; Shayden Morris became the club’s player of the year after looking like having little skill to go with his blistering pace, and Pape Gueye went from a punchline to an important member of the attacking arsenal. You could say something similar about Slobodan Rubezic, Graeme Shinnie, Vincente Besuijen, Leighton Clarkson... the list goes on. But all of them, save perhaps Morris, regressed to the mean when things turned sour. And they weren’t helped out by new signings doing the exact same.
There have now been a few players who have signed for Aberdeen during Thelin’s tenure turning up looking like world beaters, only to see their form dissipate the more they play in this team.
Alexander Jensen looked an excellent addition in January but has regressed quite a bit. Topi Keskinen showed a lot of early promise and explosiveness in attack, little of which has been seen since. Ante Palaversa certainly has good performances but has struggled to find consistency. Mats Knoester initially appeared a defensive lynchpin but has put in some shaky showings of late.
Centre-half Gavin Molloy was a hidden gem whose main role this season has been makeshift left-back. And Sivert Helte Nilsen went from one of the best signings during the opening months of the 2024/25 campaign, yet you could probably count on one hand the number of undoubtedly good games he’s had since last November.
Nisbet himself did credit the head coach for helping him improve across last season, so it’s not exactly an anti-Midas touch that Thelin's got, but it’s not an encouraging record overall.
Is it the system? Is it man-management? Is it the players themselves? It doesn’t matter. It’s the manager’s job to get the best out of the squad and make them even better than the sum of their parts. Yet there is evidence throughout the squad that, on the larger body of work, he hasn’t been able to do that. Players have shown they can shine, but they aren't sparkling nearly enough.
A further layer of concern is that a lot of the business conducted earlier in the window revolved around signing younger players with the aim of developing them into first-team stars, presumably with Thelin in mind to do this, so the club can turn a tidy profit somewhere down the line.
This is crunch time for Thelin. Results have to turn and they have to turn quickly. You cannot deny that these are his players. Twenty-four new arrivals have come in since he was appointed manager. The squad is undeniably good enough to be right there with Hearts and Hibs, looking to claim third or even split the Old Firm if this Rangers team continues to pratfall about the place.
The cup win has bought him some time and he’ll be granted a measure of forgiveness due to the demands of playing in Europe six times between now and the end of the year. But he needs to start winning Scottish Premiership games with a degree of consistency, otherwise he could very well be out by Christmas.
