That it should have been Derek McInnes bringing the visiting team to Pittodrie this weekend felt somewhat symbolic.
For it was his squad of 2015/16 – arguably the best of his many good Aberdeen sides – which set an all-time club record by winning its first eight games of a domestic season: a record which Jimmy Thelin, picking up a torch which has burned the fingers of four others in the intervening three years, has now matched.
McInnes would reasonably point out that all eight of his were in the Premiership, while Thelin’s new broom has largely been used to sweep aside lower-division League Cup opponents. Were he still with us, Davie Shaw – who by the third month of his managerial career had won more trophies than he’d dropped league points – would justifiably scoff at both.
But there is no arguing against the record books, which state, in black and white, that no Dons team has ever opened a campaign with a better string of results than these.
Those empty vessels from elsewhere in Scotland who noisily doubted Thelin’s suitability to work in a country he’d never experienced may now see it’s not necessarily as hard as their own friends make it look.
Were that ever a serious concern, the arrival of Kevin Nisbet would serve to allay it. A former SPFL star returning in his mid-twenties after an uninspiring spell in England, this is the type of signing which was McInnes’ absolute stock in trade.
Whether specifically instructed by Thelin or a tool delivered to him by the club’s recruiters, Nisbet should provide a threat which Scottish defences already know they struggle to contain, to go alongside those they have yet to face. There is plenty to suggest that this fast start may be maintained for some time yet.
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