Football has an odd habit of ascribing things which continually recur to fortune or predestination.
And the more they happen, the more the perception is reinforced. The comfort of confirmation bias trumps the effort and risk of being too curious about causality.
Such surrender to fate offers a major opportunity to those who do not follow the traditional orthodoxy; those who believe that most moments within a game can be controlled, given the correct approach and preparation. Those such as Jimmy Thelin.
For a fifth time in this young season, Thelin’s Dons won a match by virtue of a goal scored in or after its 80th minute – but this is no lucky streak.
Nor is it coincidental that, on all five occasions, one man stood front and centre in the goal area: Nicky Devlin. Directly involved, as here, in three; drawing a defender to create space for one; and lurking under the bar for any potential rebound at the other.
The received wisdom would propose that these are not places in which a full-back should appear in the final minutes of a game in the balance. Observation says that few would have the engine capacity to get there anyway after shuttling up and down the touchline all day.
But the pace and stamina of Devlin and Thelin’s bravery and adventure are the perfect marriage. When a manager who emboldens his side to push higher and higher as the stakes do likewise is endowed with athletes of such physical endurance, it places unsustainable strain on opponents’ defensive circuits when they are already at the point of overheating.
Devlin, at various levels, has long been one of Scottish football’s under-the-radar heroes. Bundled into the spotlight – and deservingly onto the international stage – courtesy of Thelin’s tactics, he is becoming truly impossible to miss.
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