We need to be honest about Jimmy Thelin and his Aberdeen team

We all expected the wheels to come off the Aberdeen title challenge to some extent. But what we didn't expect was for the car to drive straight off a cliff edge and plummet into the North Sea.

Defeat at Ibrox on Wednesday night felt like a new low for Jimmy Thelin. They may only have been 1-0 down with 90 minutes played, but it felt like the most comfortable win Rangers have had this season. The sight of a bamboozled Kevin Nisbet bursting a gut to cover the left-back position and head the ball back to his keeper with his team trailing well into the second half just about summed it up. No one knew what they were meant to be doing, and a Rangers team with so many demonstrable vulnerabilities were allowed to coast home.

It was Aberdeen's sixth defeat in seven games and means they are now winless in 12. It's the type of run hardly a club in the world would stand for without serious questions being asked of their manager. So it begs the question: why is Thelin seemingly immune to serious scrutiny?

The sheer sharpness of their descent into nothingness perhaps feeds into a feeling that once things turn, they'll be back on track for good – or at least for long enough to repair the damage. The Dons won their first 13 games under Thelin and didn't lose until November. They haven't won a game since the very same month, and the reverse-Cinderella transformation, from a formidable force with genuine title aspirations into a rabble as gutless as they are clueless, surely can't stick.

They are still fourth, after all, a position they'd likely have taken in pre-season, considering how grim things were looking this time a year ago. What's worrying though is that this form is just about as bad as it's been in recent years. Worse, even.