BARRY ROBSON has won a league title having come from a long way back and so sees no reason why Aberdeen can't do the same this season.
Back in 2008, he was at Celtic who were written off after falling nine points behind Rangers with the finish line not so far away, only for two Old Firm victories, one of which saw Robson score the winner, meant that the title went to Parkhead on the last day of the campaign
Could it happen again? Albeit this time it is Celtic who are being hunted down. You better believe it.
Robson, who made his first start of the season for Aberdeen in Wednesday's win over Dundee United, is to wily to actually come out and say his team can be crowned champions, even if it would be refreshing to here someone, anyone, from Pittodrie make such a bold comment.
But you can tell they fancy their chances. With ten games to go, Celtic are all over the place and that four point gap could evaporate in the blink of an eye.
Robson was asked if he was surprised to be four points away from old club so late in the day. He said: "I don’t know about that but we expected to be getting close to the points tally we are at because we have some good players, a good management team and fans who have really backed us.
"We know we have a good team and the points we needed to get and we are pretty close to that. If that takes us to where we want to go that is what we want.”
Where so Aberdeen want to go?
Robson said: "Where do you think we want to go? I have been there with Celtic being nine points behind and we clawed it back. A lot of that was down to desire, work rate, mentality, fitness and it takes everything to be a top team. I think against Dundee United we showed that.
"There is a long, long way to go and we know the quality of Celtic. They have top, top players and we all know how they are budget-wise. The one thing I do know we have a great spirit, a good group of players, who are fit, work hard for each other and do the best we can and will continue to do that to try and get as many results as we can between now and the end of the season.
"There are 10 games left. I hadn’t even looked at the league. I didn’t even know there was only four points between the teams. I am not even interested in looking at the league.
"We will see how it goes. We have a big game against Partick Thistle and we will see if we can get three points there.”
Does anyone really believe Robson or anyone else has no idea what Aberdeen have to do from here on in? Of course not.
What the 37-year-old does will admit to believing in is that the squad is strong enough to cope with the run-in. After all, Aberdeen lost their goalkeeper in January, some of their best players through injury, top scorer Adam Rooney's season may well be over, and still they have not gone away
They've had bad patches and awful refereeing decisions. They are not where they are through good fortune.
“The players we have got experience and we have some really good players," said Robson. “You have Willo Flood who was on the bench against United who will probably come in and play the rest of the games and rightly so. We have other younger boys coming through and Jonny Hayes will also be back.
“It is a squad thing and if anybody knows that it is me. I have enjoyed being here and watching the boys do well.I have trained hard and tried to push them along but it is not about me it is about the group.
"If I can help in any way, which hopefully I can, that would be great but it is about winning games and the manager picks team to win games.”
Going back to 2008 when Robson was instrumental in Celtic winning a third in a row. The lessons he learned over those incredible few months have stayed with him.
And that is bad news for his former employers.
"You just got your head down and won football matches," he recalled “If you are tired then get through it and if you don’t feel you are playing well then work hard for the team mate next to you.
“Get the ball back and give it to somebody who was playing well – it was that simple. There was a massive expectation on Celtic at that time with the big budget and everything else.”
There is massive expectation now. Celtic are not living up to it. Aberdeen are on the prowl.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here