Former Aberdeen midfielder Theo ten Caat is convinced the Dons’ winless run is nothing more than a blip – and has backed boss Jimmy Thelin to turn the club’s fortunes around.
Aberdeen’s impressive start to the season has hit a bump in the last couple of weeks with Thelin’s side now on a run of five games without a win.
It’s the first real test for Thelin since arriving in Scotland but Dutchman ten Caat, who played for Aberdeen from 1991 to 1994, has seen enough to believe Thelin’s team will bounce back.
He said: “Everyone was so happy with the early games they won but now the team has lost a couple do you really think we’re going to lose the rest?
“There’s always a stumble. I mean, you’ve got injuries, you’ve got suspensions, you’ve got those kind of things.
“It happens, look at Rangers and how poor they started. Now they’re playing a bit better. I mean, they have been getting results anyway.
“I’m sure Aberdeen will overcome it but you can’t win them all, man.”
‘You win, stay humble’
Ten Caat highlighted Thelin’s mantra of wanting his team to stay humble in their work as being the exact approach required at Pittodrie.
The 60-year-old believes the calm, measured and focused approach of Thelin will serve the Dons well in the second half of the season.
He said: “I totally agree with him when he says stay humble. You win, stay humble. Be aggressive on the pitch but you stay humble.
“You win, okay, you go onto the next one but there are no big words and not talking about league titles and winning cups.
“I’m sure they will have a good season. They will probably finish third or so.
“What I saw against Celtic impressed me. If you go two down at Celtic Park and you get a draw it shows the mentality is pretty good.
“So if the mentality is good, they will have a good season, I’m sure.”
Ten Caat has urged the Dons to forget about Bojan Miovski
The Dons’ winless run has been a subject of debate among fans while Gothenburg Great Willie Miller pondered in his Evening Express column last week whether the absence of Bojan Miovski, who joined Girona in August, was now being felt at Pittodrie.
But ten Caat believes bemoaning the loss of the star striker is counterproductive.
He said: “I read on social media about Miovski and that’s not a good thing to do.
“Miovski is gone and I don’t think the manager has talked about him. If I was the manager I wouldn’t even mention him.
“When everything was going great nobody mentioned him Now everybody’s talking about Miovski.
“I really don’t understand that because when the boys won all those games in a row at the start nobody talked about him.
“But now you have had a couple of poor results, two defeats in 16, and I see his name being mentioned every week.
“Miovski is gone, it’s history. It’s time to move on and focus on players who are here.”
Ten Caat’s love affair with Aberdeen remains
Ten Caat may have left the Dons 30 years ago but he remains a keen follower of his former club.
He watched Barry Robson’s Aberdeen team play Rangers in the Premier Sports Cup final at Hampden last season and insists the club and the Granite City has left a lasting impression on him.
The Dutchman said: “I don’t know why Aberdeen is so special to me. It’s because of the people. I love the people.
“I love the attitude. I’m a bit similar. I mean, I’m not from the west.
“I’m from the north-east of Holland as well. That’s also a bit of a remote area where we always have to fight against Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord in the west.
“Even in my difficult times, the support of the supporters kept me going, and after I left Aberdeen, I always had a kind of weakness in me for Aberdeen. I’m always looking at Aberdeen.
“If I can find a game, I’ll watch it. I was with my dad last year in Glasgow, when they played the League Cup final which we lost 1-0.
“Over the years I have visited Aberdeen and been back to Scotland for holidays and things like that.
“Even when I was a coach of FC Twente with the youth, I visited Aberdeen Football Club. We stayed at the Barracks and I remember playing Aberdeen and Dundee United.
“We were over a few times when guys like Chic McLelland, Drew Jarvie and Neil Simpson were involved and it was always a good experience for the boys.
“It’s a totally different kind of style of play.”
Goal trumped ten Caat’s performance against Manchester United
Ten Caat was the last of the Dutch players to join Alex Smith’s influx of players from the Netherlands when he moved to the Dons in 1991 from Groningen.
His first season at Pittodrie was easily his best as he scored five goals and provided six assists in 30 appearances for the club.
His Pittodrie debut also remains a memorable occasion after he netted a spectacular goal in a 1-1 draw against Manchester United in a friendly game labelled the Tall Ships Challenge.
Ten Caat remembers his goal well but laughs off the idea his first game at Pittodrie was a memorable one.
He said: “I think that game was also Peter Schmeichel’s first game as well for Manchester United as well.
“The goal was a good shot on the angle and everybody talks about the goal, but from my point of view, and I’m really critical about my performances all the time, I don’t think I even played a good game.
“I remember everybody talking about that game against Manchester United and saying I played really good but I did not think so.”
‘I went from almost being an international to playing in the reserves’
It was Smith who brought ten Caat to Scotland but the duo’s time together was brief as the former Dons boss was sacked in February 1992 and replaced by Willie Miller.
The change in manager brought a change in fortunes for ten Caat.
He said: “Football is all about relationships and trust and believing in each other and I did pretty well under Alex Smith.
“I played 30 games and then Willie took over and he wanted to play a totally different game.
“You always think you can control life, but life is controlling.
“With a change of manager I went from doing well and almost becoming an international player in Holland to sitting on the bench half a year later at Aberdeen, and in my last year I played with the reserves.
“So, life can change pretty quickly. That’s football.”
Ten Caat planning a return to Pittodrie
Despite his disappointment at falling out of the first-team picture at Pittodrie, ten Caat’s time with the Dons is a period he looks back on fondly.
The Dutchman will release his autobiography, Standing Free: The life and times of Theo ten Caat, in March 2025 and is planning a return to the Granite City in February next year for An Evening with Theo Ten Caat and friends at Pittodrie.
He is relishing the chance to return to his home from home.
Ten Caat said: “Some players have great memories of games. Theo Snelders, for example, has a really good memory about the cup finals.
“I can understand that but I was more into the relationships with team-mates and coaches. I just wrote a couple of stories of what happened during those kind of things, what happens before a game, during a game, those kind of things.
“Life is full of ups and downs and so is football so I have talked a lot about my youth as well.
“There are football stories of course, and many happy memories of my time in Aberdeen.
“But I wanted to tell people about the way I grew up, the challenges and difficulties living in a village the size of Huntly shaped me as a person and how my parents brought me up and showed me the way.
“I don’t even see it as a total football book.
“It’s a boy who has got a lot of challenges in his youth. And that’s the reason he had to fight and fight for it to stand up.
“Luckily, I had one big talent and that was football, and that helped me a lot.”
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