Inside Jimmy Thelin's rise to Aberdeen FC as quiet assassin is the ANTI Warnock who carries shades of Sven

By all accounts Jimmy Thelin prides himself on being a tough nut to crack.

An interesting guy who tries his damndest to come across as not very interesting at all. A quietly spoken Swede with a long held preference for keeping a low profile, even when the success of his work demands the opposite be true. In other words, Aberdeen’s new manager is the sharpest possible contrast from the tub thumper of an interim who was meant to be keeping the seat warm for him but who, ultimately, left town after all manner of broken promises.

If Neil Warnock played up to the role of saying a great deal while doing very little worth talking about, then it may come as a source of considerable comfort to fans of the Pittodrie club to learn the new man is cut from entirely different managerial cloth. A young, ambitious, studious coach who is looked upon in his homeland as having the potential to take on the mantle of the new Sven-Goran Eriksson, Thelin is being hotly tipped for big things now he has chosen to spread his wings after four highly impressive years at Elfsborg.

He doesn’t share all of Eriksson’s more flamboyant personality traits. Few do. Thelin is known more for being an intensely private family man when it comes to how he lives his life away from the football field. But he shares a similarly strong belief in his philosophy on how the game ought to be played, is respected as an organiser, a man manager with the human touch and a specialist when it comes to being a builder of teams.

It’s all very reminiscent of the way the young Eriksson was regarded back in the early 80s before he set off on the journey which would lead him to the England and Manchester City jobs, with the occasional stop off in Ulrika.

Just don’t expect Thelin