Jimmy Thelin’s is not a face which was designed for the display of anger. For students of that steadfast exterior, then, Saturday was a significant afternoon.
Thelin, visibly, was raging, after yet another defeat which felt inevitable from early on. Tense and sharp, the Dons’ manager was not shy in identifying shortcomings in his side’s offerings, the uncomfortable pauses suggesting there was plenty more fire stored behind those clenching jaw muscles which he judged against breathing in public.
No guesswork required this week as to the emotions of the taciturn coach, but plenty of other, major questions. Principally, where specifically is his ire directed, and what practically can he do about it?
Few would argue with Thelin’s assessment that his players are losing too many individual duels and leaving the field with more left in the tank than is defensible. And for many managers early in their tenure it is a reasonable refrain, left working, as they often are, with the remnants of a predecessor’s failed squad.
But six of the ten outfield starters here joined on Thelin’s watch, and having been selected for the job months before he arrived in the building the recruitment ought to have been completely centred on delivering players to suit his needs.
If that process has, at huge expense, left him with a team which cannot even provide the footballing basics, it would be a woeful organisational failure.
One which, worryingly, no longer has an obvious solution. For while the philosophical anchor of the project is that the money thrown at it rebounds back into the club’s coffers, the longer the decay proceeds the more it looks like it has been chucked off a cliff.
Thelin’s thrift will be seriously tested in the coming weeks. What can he knit together from the materials available?
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