The Thistle Archive

This left-footed, left-sided midfielder impressed in the Thistle youth ranks during 2022-23, so much so that the likes of West Ham, Fulham and Crystal Palace had scouts keeping close tabs on his progress. He earned 4 caps for Scotland U-16s that term, and followed that up with a cap for the U-17s national team in August 2023. He got his first experience of the Partick Thistle first-team at Stuart Bannigan's testimonial, replacing Zander MacKenzie for the final half an hour in front of around 1,300 at Firhill.

Aiden was a Thistle Weir Academy player throughout his high school years, earning player-of-the-year awards along the way. Like Zak Rudden & Billy Gilmour before him, he enrolled as an SFA performance school student (where football is practiced everyday within an educational environment) to aid his development as a potential footballing professional. The vision of the school is to "produce players with excellent technique who can pass with precision, control with comfort, run with purpose and play with joy."

Surprisingly, the player decided to leave the Thistle Weir Academy early in 2024, and was soon playing in the Queen's Park youth set up. In August 2024, the 17-year-old Aiden was back at Firhill on first team business, but had to watch from the bench as his QP teammates went down by 3 goals to nil to Thistle on match day 4 of the Championship.