Jimmy Thelin urges Aberdeen to maintain their ‘identity’ after upturn in form

Aberdeen manager Jimmy Thelin has outlined the team focus which has got their season back on track.

The Dons secured a top-six place with a 4-1 win over Motherwell last weekend and have lost just once, to Celtic, in six William Hill Premiership matches while also setting up a Scottish Gas Scottish Cup semi-final against Hearts.

Their post-split destiny should never have been in doubt after taking 31 points from their first 11 matches.

But they failed to win in their next 14 league games and lost 10 of them.

Speaking ahead of Saturday’s trip to face Ross County, Thelin said: “We have focused a lot in the last month about what we have to do as a team, and especially when you have a lot of players in and out of the squad.

“We keep working with an identity, responsibility, how we can be a good collective team, but still making the individual players to grow.

“The most important thing for us is to keep going and do our things really, really well and always have the respect of the opponent, their strengths and weakness. How we should attack them and how we have to defend them, but still doing our things much better.

“We have seen some signs of that in the last games. We are more consistent in our actions and have a better rhythm and more timing into the team.

“That’s football sometimes, things can change quickly. If you see the trend, how you perform over some games there is always ups and downs but the trend, I think, is upwards and that’s good for us in a really important part of the season now and the targets that we have.”