It was a brave and rather surprising decision when Neil McCann did his U-turn at the end of last season and decided he was going to stay on at Dens following his successful emergency intervention to get the club out of relegation trouble.

That stint had served to reinforce his talismanic status he had developed among supporters during his playing days, but taking the manager’s job permanently inevitably carried the potential of, at the very least, tarnishing that and in the early months of the new season it looked as if that might well be how it would turn out as the club touched the foot of the Premiership table on a couple of occasions.

Aberdeen mid-season report card: Ryan Christie shining in mixed campaign for the Dons

They had been playing some watchable football, however, offering the hope that if they could add some finishing power they would play their way out of trouble and the evidence of the last few weeks running into the winter break was all the more encouraging on that front.

The mid-November draw with Kilmarnock, on the back of five successive defeats, now looks to have been a turning point, not least because of what immediately followed. They had, in February, claimed a first home win over Rangers in a quarter of a century and the corporation bus model is apparently still in vogue in Dundee since after waiting all that time a second one came along in the same year.

Celtic mid-season report card: Domestic dominance continues but room for improvement in Europe

That was immediately backed up by a first away win of the season at Ross County and since then a 3-0 defeat of Partick Thistle and a draw at Motherwell pulled them out of the bottom two even before another away win at St Johnstone took them into the break in 10th place and excellent spirits.