The European soccer club with the best record this season — 13 wins from 13 games — isn't one that most would have expected.
This team spent last season in the bottom half of a domestic league it hasn't won since 1985 and has never qualified for the Champions League in its modern format.
It is, however, still the last team to have beaten Real Madrid in a European club competition final, 41 years ago when managed by an all-time great.
Those heady 1980s days when Alex Ferguson ran the show at Aberdeen, on the windswept north-east coast of Scotland, are being revived by an unexpectedly strong start to the season.
On Saturday, Aberdeen’s trophy credentials get their toughest test yet in an away game at league-leading Celtic, the defending champion which also has a 100% record in the Scottish Premiership of seven straight wins.
It is almost one year since Aberdeen last went to Celtic Park and was routed 6-0. That was three permanent or interim managers ago.
Swedish coach Jimmy Thelin then came in this offseason and put a spring in the step of a team that fans call the Dandy Dons.
Starting with a series of July wins against lower-tier opponents in the League Cup, Thelin has known only victories in Scotland since leaving Elfsborg after six years.
Two stoppage-time winning goals were needed to keep the streak going before a 13th straight win was sealed on Oct. 6 by an 88th-minute goal from Ante Palaversa in a second-half rally to beat Hearts 3-2.
“That says a lot about the team now,” said Thelin. “We can see the fire in the eyes of the players.”
Enthusiasm is also back among the fans who have packed Pittodrie Stadium to its 20,000 capacity. Palaversa scored at the beach end of the ground, behind which the statue of Ferguson that the former Manchester United manager himself unveiled in 2022 looks toward the chilly North Sea.
Palaversa, a former Croatia Under-21 midfielder, is a typical example of the type of players that Aberdeen has had to find. Once a $7 million teenage buy for Manchester City, he left without playing a game for Pep Guardiola.
Palaversa had two injury-hit seasons with Man City’s French sister club Troyes before moving to Scotland at the age of 24.
"I feel I need to take this opportunity at Aberdeen to prove myself and get my career back on track," he said when signing in August.
Thelin found instant success despite selling star player Bojan Miovski for a club record 6.8 million pounds ($8.9 million) to Girona. The North Macedonia forward made his debut in the Champions League last month.
Transfer cash has been key to making Aberdeen’s business model work and drove its revenues above 23 million pounds ($30 million) in its most recent accounts.
Celtic earns about five times as much, with a 60,000-seat stadium in Glasgow and regular Champions League action helping fund the signings of Denmark goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel and Belgian midfielder Arne Engels, who cost 11 million euros ($12 million).
Celtic also has won all its games in Scotland this season. A 7-1 loss at Borussia Dortmund is the only game it hasn't won in all competitions.
Celtic has the storied history in Saturday’s top-of-the-table clash. It was European Cup winner in 1967 and lost in the final three years later. It also reached the 2003 UEFA Cup final — beaten by José Mourinho’s Porto — and has 54 Scottish league titles. Glasgow rival Rangers has 55.
Aberdeen is tied for third in the list with just four Scottish titles, three of them in a golden era under Ferguson from 1978-86 before he was lured to Manchester United.
Still, Aberdeen remains the last Scottish team to win a European title. Ferguson’s young team won the 1983 European Cup Winners’ Cup final, beating Real Madrid 2-1 in extra time. Since then, Madrid has won all 11 of its finals, nine in the Champions League and two UEFA Cups.
While Thelin is far from matching Ferguson yet, he has Aberdeen feeling like a winner again.
“We are on a journey together now,” he said. “We are still (keeping our) feet on the ground and stay humble.”
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - Former Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, watches a large TV screen during The County Hurdle race, during the final day of the Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse, England, Friday, March 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Dave Shopland, File)
CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch has stepped down with company shares sinking 19% this year and the health care giant struggling on several fronts.
Company shares tumbled again Friday after CVS Health also warned of disappointing third-quarter earnings and said investors should not rely on guidance it laid out in August.
Lynch will be replaced by veteran CVS Health executive David Joyner, who will attempt to steer the company through rising costs to its health insurance business, slumping drugstore sales and growing investor pressure. All major pharmacy chains are attempting to navigate a drastically changed landscape, facing competition online and elsewhere.
Leerink Partners analyst Michael Cherny said the leadership change was unexpected, though he understood the rationale behind it “following another quarter of underperformance.”
“It is hard, given the operational and stock underperformance, to say a change at the top is undeserved,” he said in a research note.
CVS Health runs one of the nation’s largest drugstore chains and a huge pharmacy benefit management business that operates prescription drug coverage for employers, insurers and other big clients. It also covers nearly 27 million people through its Aetna insurance arm.
The company cut its financial expectations for a third time this year in August, hurt by growing claims from its Medicare Advantage coverage, and Lynch said then that she was taking over leadership of the insurance segment.
Her predecessor in the insurance wing, former Humana executive Brian Kane, left the company about a year after his arrival.
Barclays analyst Andrew Mok said Friday that the struggling insurance arm now has a leadership gap that the company will have to address in the near term.
CVS Health said Friday that it still was struggling with higher medical costs in that segment and, because of that, investors shouldn't rely on the guidance it provided in August.
The company has been operating “well below its potential and has fallen short in its investment and actuarial approach in recent years,” Glenview Capital Management said in a statement issued earlier this month.
The hedge fund, which holds a stake in CVS Health, said it was offering “suggestions to enhance the governance, culture, efficiency, sustainability and growth of CVS Health.”
Rising claims from the company’s Medicare Advantage coverage have hurt CVS Health for much of this year and contributed to it its repeated outlook cuts. Medicare Advantage plans are privately run versions of the federal government’s coverage program mainly for people age 65 and older.
CVS Health also said in August that it has been hurt by a drop in quality ratings for those plans and pressure from Medicaid coverage it manages in several states.
The Woonsocket, Rhode Island company said Friday that it expects third-quarter adjusted earnings to fall between $1.05 to $1.10 per share. Analysts polled by FactSet predict earnings of $1.69 per share.
CVS Health will report third-quarter results on November 6, the day after Election Day.
Joyner, who will also join the company's board, most recently served as executive vice president of CVS Health, and president of its pharmacy benefit management, or PBM, arm. The company said he has 37 years of health care and pharmacy benefit management experience.
CVS Health also announced on Friday that Chairman Roger Farah will now be executive chairman. Farah said in a statement that the board believed it was “the right time to make a change,” and they were confident in Joyner's leadership.
Lynch became CEO in early 2021, replacing the company’s long-time leader Larry Merlo. She came to CVS Health when the company acquired its Aetna division several years ago.
Her tenure started with the company’s drugstores riding a wave of revenue from COVID-19 vaccines. She then led an aggressive push into care delivery.
Lynch told analysts in 2021 that “we are closer to the consumer than anyone else,” and providing more care can help the company influence the overall cost of care.
CVS Health spent $8 billion buying home health care provider Signify Health and then another $10.6 billion early last year on Oak Street Health, which runs clinics that specialize in treating Medicare Advantage patients.
CVS Health's stock fell 8%, or $5.10, to $58.56 Friday while broader indexes were mixed.
FILE - A sign marks a CVS branch on Tuesday, May 16, 2023, in Pasadena, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
FILE - CVS Health President and Chief Executive Officer Karen Lynch speaks during a gathering at the Boston College's Chief Executives Club, Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
FILE - David Joyner, then-executive vice president and president of pharmacy services at CVS Health, testifies during the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
