In the end, Aberdeen got their man.
For a while there, as the current season crumbled to ash, supporters would have gladly taken any old man – as, briefly, did the club – but nerve has been rewarded with what appears to have been the top candidate. As is usually the case, it is less important to make a quick decision than to make the right one.
There is plenty reason to be optimistic that the hire of Jimmy Thelin is just that.
Detractors will perhaps worry about Thelin’s lack of direct knowledge of the league, but that is an increasingly arcane and parochial concern in the modern day.
Tape over the badges on the jerseys of the Premiership’s multinational squads and there is little which marks them out as being impenetrably Scottish.
Jimmy Thelin has been appointed as the twenty-fifth permanent manager of Aberdeen Football Club.
The Swede, together with assistants Christer Persson and Emir Bajrami, will leave their current roles at IF Elfsborg this summer, taking up post at Pittodrie in early June.
— Aberdeen FC (@AberdeenFC) April 16, 2024
Much more relevant is Thelin’s experience of managing a club which occupies a similar space relative to its Swedish rivals as he will find here.
Operating outside of the country’s main population centres and against champions implausibly inflated by regular deposits of European riches, Thelin has led a long-term project seeking to make Elfsborg a self-sustaining contender. That ticks more boxes for leading the next stage of Aberdeen’s journey than being able to list all the names Livingston’s ground ever had.
Supplied with the right parts to build his team, Thelin will also bring noticeable change on the field.
If one had to sum up Aberdeen’s play this season in one family-friendly word, it would be purposeless: pause footage of any game and you are likely to see the majority of players standing rigidly, with no obvious clue as to how they would begin to construct a scoring chance. Under Thelin, that simply will not happen.
His Elfsborg side is renowned for its hustle, which it uses to devastating effect. In what came heartbreakingly close to being a title-winning 2023 league campaign, Elfsborg scored 16 goals within ten seconds of turning over possession: eight of them, including in statement thrashings of Malmo and Djurgarden, from steals made inside the final third.
Of 49 goals scored in passages of open play, 13 came with five or more Elfsborg players inside the box at the moment of impact.
Thelin’s Elfsborg are, in NFL parlance, a blitzing team; one which seizes fleeting opportunities to overwhelm opponents by flooding key areas.
Effecting that at Pittodrie would be revelatory from an entertainment standpoint, and on paper represents a shrewd bet to maximise return on a budget which will sit around the 70th percentile of the Premiership’s exponential curve.
The managerial hunting trail is laced with many pitfalls, and under Dave Cormack’s stewardship Aberdeen have sampled most of them. Too young; too old. Too staid; too naive. Overly familiar; unnecessarily confrontational.
But each previous hire has been in defiance of some pretty obvious warnings, and none of the danger signs carry Jimmy Thelin’s face. Though that does not mean success is guaranteed or imminent, the odds have just nudged slightly towards the Dons’ favour.
Analysis: ‘Football mad vampire’ Jimmy Thelin ready to sink his teeth into new challenge at Aberdeen