Celtic should beat this Aberdeen team. Next season, they should be better.

Yesterday, Aberdeen were at Ibrox, and they were woeful. I’m surprised to have read at the weekend that they’ve sold all their tickets for the Scottish Cup Final. Their fans must really be looking forward to the occasion. But if their team turns up against us and plays the way they did yesterday, it won’t be four. It won’t be five. It won’t be six. It’ll make the semi-final in the League Cup look like a close game.

We were excellent on Saturday, and it’s not for nothing that we’ve taken all the praise in the media this weekend for the very professional, very disciplined way we went about our business. A lot of people might have thought that we’d settle back into that little rut we were in before the rotation turnaround, but we didn’t. And that’s what was most impressive about it. We looked like a team that still had points to prove and still had things to win in the league, instead of a team that’s already champions.

I thought Aberdeen had improved in recent weeks, but their performance was so far below par that Jimmy Thelin must be genuinely worried. Especially with two games against us on the horizon — one on Wednesday and one at Hampden. In front of his home crowd, they should be a little bit better. But if they come to Hampden in that frame of mind and in that kind of form, it’ll be over by half-time.

In terms of the psychological impact, it was the absolute worst result they could have got. It’ll have done their confidence no good whatsoever. And with Celtic’s form now on the upturn, I think it’s a game that a lot of them will be looking at with a sort of free-flowing dread, rather than any anticipation of silverware.

Listen, Aberdeen have been a bit of a basket-case club for a while now. Their clubbase takes itself seriously. They’re a club which wants to be a contender again, and they believe they can be — because they are, really, the last club that was. That belief is born out of two things. First, they’re the last club that almost won a title in the midst of this desert of Glasgow dominance. And then, they are the last club to actually win a title. They also have one more European trophy than both of the Glasgow clubs.

A lot of people will say that was merely down to the influence of Alex Ferguson.

You won’t get many Aberdeen fans who see it entirely that way. They believe in their team. They believe their club can come back and do it again — and they should believe that. They absolutely should. And it should be the objective of everyone at Aberdeen to make sure they challenge at the top.

Jimmy Thelin was never going to get it right in one season. It was never going to be fixed over the course of a single campaign. But the way they started the season suggested it could be done. The way they came back strongly from that bad spell suggests it could be done. But that capitulation at the weekend? That’s a warning shot as to how much work it’s going to take to do it. And how much time will be required.

There’s a certain space and luxury in being in Aberdeen’s position — which is to say, a position where no one expects you to come first or second, and third is seen as a major achievement. In short, nobody is going to be demanding the manager’s head at the end of this season. Nobody will be demanding it at the end of next season either, unless they go into a tailspin which puts him on the brink of catastrophe.

So at a club structured that way, you do have time. Time is on your side, to a certain extent. A club in that position can start laying foundations. And if they find the right guy, they can give him the time, the space and the support he needs to push with a long-term plan. That’s the advantage they have to press.

There was a time when a lot of people who read this blog accused me of being an elitist — of being someone who only wanted to see my own team rule the roost forever, and who wasn’t really interested in a challenge. But they all know now that that is nonsense. Because I’ve spent a long time on here basically begging the clubs around us to take the idea seriously. It is not insurmountable. The task facing them is not some massive, difficult, incredibly complicated job. In fact, it’s reasonably straightforward.

Be better than everyone else on a regular basis. This is the Scottish league. This is not the Premiership, where every single game, every single week, is a massive test. If you can get your ducks sufficiently in a row, you can easily make yourself the best of the rest. And then all you’re doing is waiting for the right season and the right confluence of circumstances at the two Glasgow clubs, and you can at least overtake one of them.

You know, one of my favourite movies is Glengarry Glen Ross. And I speak often about Alec Baldwin’s stunning eight-minute cameo as Blake, the high-powered, high-pressure salesman brought in to give a pep talk to the Rio Rancho sales team. What he does, for almost the entire duration of that monologue, is insult every single one of them. Now the insults have a purpose — he’s trying to find out who’s tough enough to handle it, who’s got the balls to stand up to him, and who’s willing to just sit there and take it. But his motivational tool isn’t in the words he says — it’s in the promise he makes at the start, delivering the message from the owners, Mitch & Murray, in an unmistakable way:

“First prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”

And Blake’s very simple, easy-to-comprehend logic should be the governing policy of Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and any other club that genuinely wants to be successful. If your team finishes first, you’re God. If it finishes second, you’re a hero. If it finishes third, you’re fired.

That’s the only way you’re ever going to get gods. It’s the only way you’re ever going to get heroes. And it’s the only way any of their squads will ever start the season in the frame of mind that if you’re finishing third, you might as well finish last.

I’m hosting tonight’s podcast, and I’ve put that forward as one of the subjects to discuss. And look, it might not be feasible. Clubs might not want to put a manager under that kind of pressure. But until you do — until your club is testing itself, pushing itself, and setting that as the minimum goal — no one’s ever going to progress.

I would love to see that kind of mentality at those clubs. And I still think Aberdeen is the club most likely to adopt it. But yesterday was a big blow for them, because they looked miles away from it. And Wednesday could inflict a bigger blow. And the cup final will — hopefully — inflict a really heavy one.

But they have to be thinking next season about a second-place finish, at a minimum. And until those clubs start thinking in those terms, none of them is going to get anywhere.