Are Scotland’s New Firm back in business? Tangerines and Dons face off in battle for third place

No one knows exactly who first coined the New Firm label, which accompanied the emergence of Aberdeen and Dundee United as serial trophy contenders in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The name was widely used across all media before their combined impact on the Scottish football landscape reached its peak in 1983, when United became domestic champions for the first time and the Dons lifted the European Cup Winners’ Cup in Gothenburg.

This season marks the 40th anniversary of the last time a team other than Celtic or Rangers became Scottish champions and in the period since then the New Firm brand has inevitably lost much of its resonance.

Yet tonight’s meeting of United and Aberdeen at Tannadice carries with it at least some faint echoes of a time when the rivalry between the clubs was perhaps the most compelling in the country.

Jim Goodwin and Jimmy Thelin may be operating with more modest ambitions and against a backdrop of scaled-back expectations compared to those that underpinned the brilliance of Jim McLean and Alex Ferguson in their respective roles forty years ago.

In their own way, however, United boss Goodwin and his Dons counterpart Thelin have created a situation that has given the match a new sense of meaning.

A win for Goodwin’s side would move them to just three points behind third-placed Aberdeen, who are desperately trying to stop a seven-match winless run that has taken some of the shine off Thelin’s remarkable start to life in Pittodrie.

Fighting to be the best of the rest behind the Old Firm is now the loftiest goal that either club can realistically aspire to. The heady days their supporters enjoyed under McLean and Ferguson are now simply unattainable.

The financial playing field at the time was almost as level as the one on which these management titans regularly bled the noses of Celtic and Rangers. Wages paid by the Glasgow giants were at a similar level to those at the New Firm, while the restrictive nature of player contracts at the time largely allowed McLean and Ferguson to prevent their top performers from moving elsewhere.

In nine of the fourteen seasons from 1978 to 1991, which started with Ferguson replacing Billy McNeill as Aberdeen manager and ended with the formidable Alex Smith at the helm, the Dons won the title three times and finished runners-up six times.

In the same time frame, all under McLean’s iron rule, United claimed that historic first title in 1983, finishing third six times.

Aberdeen’s back-to-back title wins in 1984 and 1985 meant that Scottish football had gone three consecutive seasons without Celtic or Rangers becoming champions for the first time ever. The Old Firm’s hegemony has never been broken since.

In the first few months of this season, Aberdeen fans dared to dream that Thelin might be the man to change all that.

The soft-spoken, poker-faced Swedish coach arrived at a club in some disarray, having finished in the bottom six of the Premier League in two of the previous three seasons.

Although Thelin had a reputation as one of his country’s most highly regarded managerial talents, no one could have anticipated the immediate impact he would make at Pittodrie.

With a stunning 13-match winning streak from the opening day of the season, Thelin guided Aberdeen to 16 wins in his first 18 games in charge of the League Cup and Premier League.

His first bump in the road hardly fit that description; his team came from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 at Celtic Park in October to stay level with the reigning champions at the top of the table and to further fuel the excited talk of their battle. credibility as title challengers.

However, Aberdeen’s next visit to Glasgow proved an extremely chastening experience as an excited Celtic imposed their authority and underlined their continued superiority with a 6–0 League Cup semi-final win at Hampden.

Apart from the 4-1 home win over Dundee in their next match, Aberdeen have subsequently suffered a marked dip in form. They have lost four and drawn three of their last seven games, with the decline in performance reaching a new low on Boxing Day when they were defeated 4-0 by Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.

Just as Thelin has studiously avoided making grand predictions about his team during their winning run, he has also resisted being too gloomy in his assessment of their current problems.

The 46-year-old can expect strong support from club chairman Dave Cormack in the coming transfer window as he continues to revamp his first-team squad as part of what both parties view as a longer-term project.

That said, while Thelin has plenty of credit in the bank with an energetic Aberdeen fanbase, he will be wary of the need to return to winning ways as quickly as possible. As far as supporters are concerned, there would be no better place to start than Tannadice, with the New Firm rivalry off the pitch remaining as sharp as ever, even as standards have slipped.

United, whose last third-place finish in the top flight came in 2010 under Peter Houston in a season in which they also won the Scottish Cup, go into the match as slim favorites thanks to an encouraging recent run in which they have lost just once. of their last eight games.

Tannadice is proving to be the scene of managerial redemption for Goodwin, who was on the wrong side of the equation the last time United beat Aberdeen there in October 2022.

The 4-0 thrashing was a foretaste of the trauma Goodwin would suffer during his time in charge of Aberdeen and which ultimately saw him sacked in January in the wake of an ignominious Scottish Cup exit at Darvel and the 6-0 humiliation at the hands of Hibs at Easter. Away.

Dundee United raised eyebrows by offering Goodwin a quick return to work just two months later, but although he was initially unable to save them from relegation, his appointment was subsequently confirmed.

The Irishman got them back at the first attempt with a Championship title last season and they have made a more than decent fist of their return to the top flight so far.

Goodwin is certainly restoring his reputation as a coach, forged by his impressive work at Alloa Athletic and St Mirren, which was seriously tarnished by his painful experience at Aberdeen.

United’s player recruitment during his tenure has proven shrewd, with acquisitions such as Jack Walton, Will Ferry and David Babunski helping to reinvigorate a team that, like Aberdeen under Thelin, has noticeably reconnected with a previously longstanding suffering support.

With Hibs and Hearts both struggling in the bottom six of the Premier League for most of this season, the way has been cleared for Aberdeen and Dundee United to once again become a joint presence in the Old Firm slipstream.

Tonight’s showdown could be crucial in determining which of them is best equipped to stay the course over the next five months.

Forty years later the title may be far beyond their reach, but the New Firm are still able to bring their own unique brand of intrigue to Scottish football.