Some Dons debuts go with a bang.
Famously, Hans Gillhaus’, or Sam Cosgrove’s. So too that of Saturday’s welcome Pittodrie visitor, Barry Nicholson, whose thumping opening day strike in 2005 kicked off an excellent Aberdeen career which arguably deserved more credit than it ever got.
Others speak more softly. And though it was the belting finish that wielded the big stick upon the squished Spiders, it was the much subtler preceding touch which defined this game as Topi Keskinen’s debutante ball.
Sivert Heltne Nilsen’s instant pass was inviting, but it need not have been incisive. Many’s the player who, in the depths of a goalless cup tie’s stoppage time, would have prosaically taken it in and waited for someone to lay it off to.
Only the uncommonly smart would have conceived of the two-yard dragback to unlock a world of space in a packed box; only the abnormally gifted could pull it off.
Keskinen, at a glance, is both. With an unexpected caress sending a shiver up the Red Army’s spine, it was love at first sight.
What a turnaround that marks.
Mere months ago the relationship between the supporters and their team was at a low ebb, its erstwhile manager lampooning his players as a clueless shower of affable softies unlikely to win another match.
Now, since defeat at Dens in their first outing after the saga of Neil Warnock was terminated, they are unbeaten in standard play through 17 subsequent fixtures, 13 of them victories.
That is the equivalent of a third of a season, and though tests of greater difficulty and import are yet to come, these are the foundation blocks on which any successful campaign must be built.
Other Premiership sides are inspecting ruins today, so the Dons can rightly be satisfied with their handiwork.
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