Simmie racked up an incredible list of honours during his time at Pittodrie in the early eighties, and he sees a similar sort of belief around the Granite City for the first time since those heady days under Sir Alex Ferguson.
He now believes that Aberdeen can push Celtic a lot closer in the Premiership title race than the seventeen point gap they managed to restrict the Hoops' winning margin to last season.
Simpson said: “We can definitely compete.
“You go into the league hoping you can get as many points as possible. We know that Celtic have got a much bigger budget than we do, but it’s down to your performances.
“Our record against all the other teams last year was the same as Celtic’s, it was only the games against them that proved decisive in the league championship really.
“So we’ll need to do better in those games, and also keep the consistency they had last year as well.
“The first team have been really good over the last two or three years, and have moved on to another level in terms of performances, and it was brilliant to win the League Cup for our first silverware in years.
“I thought we were unlucky in the cups last year and we should do better in them this time around, and if we can keep tabs on Celtic, I think we’ll go even closer this year.
“In the area you see a lot of kids with Aberdeen tops on, which is really great to see in the north-east.”
Source: The Herald