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

No-one is exactly sure 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 moniker was in common usage across every media outlet before their combined impact on the Scottish football landscape reached its zenith in 1983 when United became domestic champions for the first time and the Dons lifted the European Cup Winners’ Cup in Gothenburg.

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

Yet this evening’s meeting of United and Aberdeen at Tannadice at least carries some faint echoes of a time when the clubs’ rivalry was arguably the most compelling in the country.

Jimmy Thelin made a great start to life as Dons boss but his team have stalled lately

Jim Goodwin’s side are flying high in fourth place after gaining promotion last season

Jim Goodwin and Jimmy Thelin may operate with more modest ambitions and against the backdrop of scaled-back expectations in comparison to those which underpinned the brilliance of Jim McLean and Alex Ferguson in their respective roles four decades ago.

In their own ways, however, United boss Goodwin and his Dons counterpart Thelin have engineered a situation which has given the fixture a fresh sense of significance.

Victory for Goodwin’s side would pull them to just three points behind third-placed Aberdeen who are desperately trying to arrest a seven-match winless run which has taken some of the shine off Thelin’s remarkable start to life in the Pittodrie hot seat.

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

The financial playing field back then was almost as level as the one upon which those managerial titans regularly bloodied the noses of Celtic and Rangers. The wages paid by the Glasgow giants were in a similar ball park to those at the New Firm, while the then restrictive nature of players’ contracts largely allowed McLean and Ferguson to prevent their top performers moving elsewhere.

In nine of the 14 seasons from 1978 to 1991, which started with Ferguson replacing Billy McNeill as Aberdeen manager and ended with the redoubtable Alex Smith at the helm, the Dons won the title three times and were runners-up on six occasions.

During the same timeframe, all under the iron rule of McLean, United claimed that historic first title in 1983 and finished third six times.

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

In the first few months of this season, Aberdeen fans found themselves daring to dream that Thelin might just be the man who could change all of that.

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

While Thelin came with 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.

Including a stunning 13-game winning streak from the opening day of the season, Thelin guided Aberdeen to 16 victories in his first 18 games in charge in the League Cup and Premiership.

His first bump in the road barely merited that description, his team coming from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 at Celtic Park in October to stay on terms with the reigning champions at the top of the table and further fuel excited chatter about their credibility as title challengers.

Aberdeen’s next trip to Glasgow proved an utterly chastening experience, however, as a fired-up Celtic imposed their authority and underlined their ongoing superiority with a 6-0 win in the League Cup semi-final at Hampden.

Aside from the 4-1 home win over Dundee in their next game, Aberdeen have subsequently suffered a marked slump in form. They have lost four and drawn three of their last seven outings with the drop-off in performance levels reaching a new low on Boxing Day when they were hammered 4-0 by Kilmarnock at Rugby Park.

Just as Thelin painstakingly avoided making any grandiose predictions about his team during their winning run, he has resisted being overly downbeat in his assessments of their current difficulties.

Sir Alex Ferguson and assistant Archie Knox lift the Cup Winners Cup for Aberdeen in 1983

Jim McLean led Dundee United to the Premier Division title back in 1983

The 46-year-old can expect strong support from club chairman Dave Cormack in the forthcoming transfer window to continue revamping his first team squad as part of what both parties regard as a longer term project.

That said, while Thelin has plenty of credit in the bank with a re-energised Aberdeen fan base, he will be wary of the need to return to winning ways as quickly as possible. There would be no better place to start than Tannadice as far as those supporters are concerned, with the New Firm rivalry having remained as keen as ever off the pitch even when standards have slipped on it.

United, whose last third-place top flight finish came in 2010 under Peter Houston in a season which also saw them win the Scottish Cup, go into the contest as slight favourites on the back of an encouraging recent run which has seen them lose just one of their last eight matches.

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 drubbing was a foretaste of the trauma Goodwin would suffer during his time in charge of Aberdeen and which ultimately saw him sacked the following January in the aftermath of an ignominious Scottish Cup exit at Darvel and 6-0 humiliation by Hibs at Easter Road.

Dundee United raised eyebrows by offering Goodwin a rapid return to work just two months later but although he could not initially save them from relegation, his appointment has subsequently been vindicated.

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

Goodwin is certainly repairing a coaching reputation, forged by his impressive work at Alloa Athletic and St Mirren, which was severely dented by his bruising experience at Aberdeen.

United’s player recruitment during his tenure has proved shrewd with acquisitions such as Jack Walton, Will Ferry and David Babunski helping to revitalise a team which, just like Aberdeen under Thelin, have noticeably reconnected with a previously long-suffering support.

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

Tonight’s showdown could prove pivotal in indicating which one of them is best equipped to stay the course over the next five months.

Forty years down the line, the title may be well beyond their reach but the New Firm are still capable of providing their own unique brand of intrigue for Scottish football.