Former Aberdeen manager Derek McInnes believes Jimmy Thelin’s Dons side are capable of pulling off a Scottish Cup shock against Celtic this weekend.
Aberdeen head for Hampden having lost their last four games of the campaign and will be massive underdogs against the treble-chasing Hoops.
But McInnes believes Thelin’s side have a fighting chance at the National Stadium and should embrace their underdog status.
He said: “Jimmy’s team certainly has the capabilities, because in finals it can be quite unpredictable, and it can change in a moment.
“The good thing with Aberdeen’s current squad is that they’ve got match winners in their squad – they’ve got guys who can score goals.
“If they can be strong defensively as a team ,then they’ll certainly have a chance I think, because I do think they’ll create chances against Celtic.
“The one benefit is being underdogs.
“We were in the League Cup final in 2014 with Inverness, where every other cup final we were in, we were underdogs, and in that final, we were favourites, so it was quite unusual.
“Everybody’s probably expecting Celtic to go and win it, but I think Aberdeen can use it to their advantage.”
Final win can lay down a marker for Jimmy Thelin
McInnes, who took Aberdeen to their last Scottish Cup final appearance against the Hoops in 2017, is the last Dons boss to lead the club to silverware, having guided his team to League Cup glory against Caley Thistle in his first full season in charge in 2014.
The former Dons boss, who has taken charge at Hearts, believes cup glory 11 years ago helped cement his status among the board of directors and the supporters at Pittodrie.
He believes glory against the Hoops can have a similar effect for Thelin.
McInnes said: “For Jimmy, who is in his first full season, similar to my first season as well, you get the chance to impose yourself on a club.
“If you’re successful right away, you’ve then got the confidence of the board to go and try and build on that.
“I think that was quite important for us, because we obviously had a really stable period after winning the League Cup in 2014.
“It was equally as important for us in that final as it is for Jimmy and the current squad.
“If you can go and win it, then you get a lot of credit in the bank, it can help you progress, and it can help you build for future, preparing for future semi-finals and finals and trying to be successful.
“Those moments for me as a manager and my family were special.
“We’ve still got all the photographs, all the memories of going down Union Street and, of course, the memories of the day at Hampden.”
Ryan Jack’s shock move to Rangers on eve of 2017 Scottish Cup final – and stripping midfielder of captaincy
McInnes’ preparations for the 2017 final were disrupted as news broke Ryan Jack had agreed to move to Rangers that summer.
The news came out of the blue for the Aberdeen manager, who stripped his midfielder of the captaincy as a result and installed Graeme Shinnie as the new skipper.
McInnes said: “I used to take it quite personal when my players left me – and I was disappointed at how it all played out to be honest. It brought an unnecessary noise.
“There was a lot of scrutiny put on me with that as well.
“Ryan was a brilliant captain for me, and a brilliant player, and I thought he was as good a midfielder (as there was) at what he does at that time.
“I didn’t want to be foolish enough not to play him, because he’s too big a player – it was a cup final, and as a manager you want to play your best players.
“I thought the best middle-ground scenario was that he wouldn’t lead us out, but would still play.”
‘Maybe we could all have handled it better’
The former Aberdeen boss believed he had no other option given the rivalry between the Dons supporters and the Light Blues, but in hindsight wonders where he was rash in making the call on the eve of the final.
He said: “As manager I have to make decisions, and looking back now, I think: ‘Would I have done the same?’
“It felt the right trade-off at the time, but in hindsight, maybe it was a bit impetuous from me, and maybe playing to the gallery a wee bit.
“Maybe I should have supported Ryan a wee bit more, but I was hurt by how it all played out to be honest, because I’ve always been completely upfront and honest with my players.
“I can accept players moving on to other things, that’s part and parcel of it, and I was well used to that.
“I tried my damnedest to keep Ryan at the club, but you can’t keep good players all the time, sometimes there’s got to be an acceptance that players will move on.
“But I look at McLean, Shinnie and Jack and what a midfield that was. They were three great boys who went on to do well in their careers, and Aberdeen played their part in that, of course.
“All three were good in the final, and regardless of whether Ryan was captain or not, he performed really well.
“Ryan knows what I think of him – and there’s no bad blood – but at the time, maybe we could all have handled it a wee bit better in hindsight.”
2017 final was the end of an Aberdeen era
By the time the Dons arrived at Hampden in 2017 they had finished as runners-up to their opponents Celtic in both the Premiership and the League Cup.
The Hoops had gone the entire domestic campaign undefeated, too, and for some of the Dons players, the final would be a last hurrah.
McInnes was proud of the squad he had assembled, but knew Aberdeen’s consistency had brought admirers.
Hampden was to be the final curtain for Jack, Peter Pawlett, Jonny Hayes, Niall McGinn and Ash Taylor.
Change was in the air at Pittodrie.
McInnes said: “It was a combination, really, of putting a squad together over two or three years, and we knew it was the end of the road for certain boys.
“There’s always a hint of sadness about it, because you always want to keep the team together as long as possible, and I thought if we’d managed to do that, then we could have been even stronger the following year.
“I’d slept on naming the team on the Friday night and the only decision I had to make was at centre-half – I felt everything else was in place but I wanted to sleep on whether it was big Ash or Anthony O’Connor who should start.
“I woke up in the morning and obviously went with Ash, so that was the only real decision I had.
“I tried to enjoy the morning, to be honest. It was a glorious day and we were all in a good frame of mind for it.
“Celtic were firm favourites, and we knew we needed a big performance, but I thought we gave the type of performance I was hoping for.”
How a Mar Hall scaffolding and training routine paid off
McInnes knew, for Aberdeen to have any chance of success, they had to take their chances against the all-conquering Hoops.
The men in red did just that with a goal straight off the training ground the day before the final paying off on the big stage.
The former Dons boss said: “I asked Andy Smillie, a big pal of mine who has a scaffolding company, if he could come and set up some scaffolding for us for the pitch at Mar Hall where we were based (to help film the set-pieces).
“We wanted to do all our video work and set-plays there.
“He sent a couple of boys down to set up the scaffolding, and I remember training late morning the day before the game.
“We worked on set-plays – and we scored from one of the set plays that we worked on!
“We knew Leigh Griffiths was prone to switching off on the edge of the box, so we tried it at Hampden and Jonny got the goal to get us in front.
“I thought we gave ourselves a chance of winning it.
“We had a couple of wee moments which meant we were so close to having the day go our way.
“We felt ready for the final, and to be honest, getting the goal ahead was a strong start, we just never stayed in front long enough.
“Stuart Armstrong’s equaliser so soon after we had taken the lead was a bit disappointing.
“I remember Shay Logan was a wee bit slow to get out to Armstrong who has got the quality to punish you on that and it was 1-1.”
The Kenny McLean chance
Football has a knack of producing sliding doors moments, and the 2017 final was no exception as a Dons break created a great chance to regain the lead, but Hayes’ cross for Kenny McLean was poor, and the chance was gone.
From there, Celtic took control and Australian Tom Rogic – as was so often the case against Aberdeen at that time – proved the difference.
McInnes said: “We had a big moment with Jonny and Kenny – and I think if we’d scored then, that would have been us.
“But unfortunately for us, and I always remember this as clear as day, Rogic liked to play high in the right-hand side of midfield, almost poked up against your back lot.
“He was starting to have a wee bit more of an influence in the last 10-15 minutes of the game, and as Dons fans will remember Rogic had been the bane of us in a couple of previous games.
“We never really managed to get a grip on him.
“I put Anthony O’Connor on as a midfielder, and I told him just play against Rogic, don’t let him enjoy the game – unfortunately for us, just as lightning struck at Hampden in the dying embers of the game when you’re preparing yourself for extra-time.
“Rogic swivelled his hips and managed to get the other side of Anthony and was good enough to score.
“It was such a sore one for us, and it was felt a bit unfair and a bit unjust. We had no time to recover in the 93rd minute, so it was a devastating blow.
“I could feel it in the pit of my stomach – in fact, I still feel it now just speaking about it.”
‘I thought we turned up’
Aberdeen may have come up agonisingly short, but for McInnes, there remains nothing but pride of his players’ performance.
He said: “Despite the outcome I was proud of how we’d shown up as a club.
“I thought we turned up. There was an arrogance about us, a confidence about us, that we didn’t feel second best, we didn’t feel inferior to Celtic on the day, and we’d obviously had the benefit of being at Hampden a few times by that stage.
“We looked like a grown-up team, like a team that could deal with everything and was going to come our way, and everything was there except the result unfortunately.
“I couldn’t have been more pleased with a lot of the performance, but unfortunately for us, we just fell short.”
Former manager’s pride at academy presence in 2014 final-winning squad
As Dons boss Thelin chases his first trophy in Scotland this weekend, McInnes’ cup final win may have taken place more than a decade ago, but the former Aberdeen manager remains proud of what his side achieved by beating Caley Thistle on penalties to claim the League Cup at Celtic Park in 2014.
The game itself was anything but a classic – but McInnes knows history only remembers the winners, not how they won.
He said: “I’m not saying this to be mischievous or anything, but when you actually look at the cup final squad, there were a lot of academy players there.
“We had Andy Considine, Russell Anderson, Joe Shaughnessy, Nicky Low, Ryan Jack, Cammy Smith and Peter Pawlett.
“It’s something that’s not really spoken about enough.
“There have been far better squads since that team when you actually look at it, but there was a real core of academy players that had grown up in the Aberdeen system. A lot of local boys.
“It wasn’t a great game. It was a tough final and we had no real pace in the team as Peter failed his fitness test and then we lost Jonny in the first five minutes.
“It was a bit of a slog, but whatever way you can, you just win it.”
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